Chapter Four - The Offer
Only an hour had elapsed when I was woken again, this time by the telephone. It was only when I unglued my crusty, blurred eyes and reached for the receiver that I heard Bob Marley thumping away in the living room and some wretched, half strangle, half scream in the bathroom that I realized it was the phone. I answered warily. The voice on the other end was much too awake and had the distinct accent of a New Orleans native, maybe the lower ninth ward, possibly mid city.
“Is this Brett?”
“Yes, you aren’t the IRS are you? Or worse, my landlord?” I asked.
The voice on the other end, which seemed slightly slurred, laughed a hardy laugh.
“Good one chief. No this is Randy Pichon, sports editor with the Daytona Daily Journal. I’ve been trying to get hold of you,” he said.
Oh yes, I mused to myself. The phone call Jeff took yesterday. However, as much as I wracked my brain I could not remember sending any clippings or resumes to Daytona, much less the sports department.
“Can you hold on a second, I have a slight problem here,” he said, not bothering to put me on hold, just half-heartedly muffling the receiver with his hand.
“I don’t know, don’t be such a useless bastard. Look, Scott just fucking write the thing. If you can’t get the coach for the stats just read the damned Sentinel, its not like they don’t always fucking scoop us anyway. I don’t know if it’s hyphenated or not, what do I look like a walking AP manual? I have an idea, why don’t you try to be a little more of a worthless
piece of crap. I don’t care, the section should have left an hour ago and you’re still scrambling for stats. The damned tournament ended two days ago. I don’t care. Look, we’re not going to talk about this any more, just fucking do it.”
As his tirade rambled on, the gagging noises in the bathroom began to intensify. There was no mistaking that ugly sound. Someone was vomiting in my bathroom. I felt a wave of nausea slowly fall over myself.
And who the hell had Bob Marley blaring away? It was too much. I wanted to hang up the phone, place blankets and aluminum foil over the windows, lower the air conditioner to 40, evict these shameless cretins from my humble abode and bury myself in the comforter.
And as far as this damn fool on the other end was concerned, I wanted no part of him.
However, despite the fear, I had a vague curiosity as to why he was contacting me. And more importantly, how he’d gotten my telephone number.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “It’s hard to find good help these days.”
Indeed. The man had a point. While many jobs and careers have evolved and changed to certain degrees, over the span of time not much had changed in the field of reporting. Publishers still yelled at managing editors, managing editors still yelled at the metro editors and the metro editors still yelled and demanded copy and blood from reporters. The deadlines didn’t change. A press conference was still a press conference. The pay was also still notoriously low. The job still attracted its share of vagrants, misanthropes and Woodward and Bernstein want-to-be’s.
Of course, there are those in some quarters who will argue that the field is becoming filled with a more integral sort- journalism school graduates; responsible people that want to resurrect the craft from the sewers of tabloid-style reporting and the like.
And yet, there are also those who argue the electronic age, the advent of the Internet, will destroy the presses forever. However, like all speculation, and the greatest plans of mice and men, it looked good on paper but in all actuality was not playing out. Newsrooms, no matter how well lit or integrated, were still places of labor, cheap labor at that. A place where you still got what you paid for. I had no idea what this man wanted with me but I had the feeling it couldn’t be anything good.
Yet, I agreed with him. Good help was hard to find, especially in the news business. “Are you here?” he asked, maybe a bit too impatient for me.
“Yeah, I’m here. What was all that ruckus about?” I asked him.
“Damned copy boy thinks I’m an editor or something,” he said, pausing. “It’s a joke, get it.”
“I’m not getting much man,” I admitted. “I just woke up. I’m fumbling through my files here and I don’t remember sending you any clips.”
“That’s because you didn’t,” he said.
Well that clarified things some. But still, how the hell had he found me? Who was this strange man disturbing a much-needed rest before I embarked upon some half-baked road-trip with Jeff and the bride of Frankenstein on coke?
“Talk sense man. I have crisis here. There is someone puking in my bathroom as we speak. I can’t contain these people,” I said.
Did I just say that out loud? I had. Christ all mighty, what had I reverted to? Here, this man was trying to give me an honest day’s work and I was speaking to him in gibberish. Get control of yourself man, I mused to myself. I’d taken several deep breaths when I heard the familiar sound of a beer can snap being released.
“What was that noise?” I asked, again, my mouth speaking before my brain could approve it. “Is that beer?”
He laughed again and broke into a Jim Morrison lyric from Roadhouse blues, “I woke up this morning and got myself a beer.”
Sweet Jesus, I thought. Just when I thought things couldn’t get more depraved I had this maniac sports editor in Florida drinking beer and serenading me to Doors songs. Somehow it seemed fitting. And then it dawned on me. Somehow, over night, I had died; maybe the puking in the bathroom was a glimpse of my own last moments on earth to replay on an endless loop from here to eternity. This was my hell; to be trapped in a 100 by 50 apartment with Jeff, Meg and this lunatic on the phone with me. Bob Marley songs were the sound track and eternal fear in the mad depths of a booze and drug binge gone awry.
Judgement was upon me. I was ill prepared for it.
“So what’s the game plan?” I asked. “What do I have to do to get through the pearly gates?”
“Get a grip on yourself, grab a beer,” he said.
I carried the cordless phone with me into the kitchen and fortunately found a Corona in the fridge. Meg was alive and awake in the living room, bouncing to Marley tunes as she smoked a fat joint. She held it out to me but I waved her off, and then thinking better of it, walked towards her and took it and inhaled deeply.
I exhaled and told her, “Turn that lower, I think this man wants to offer me
a job.”
“You got it man, hit the nail on the head. You have a beer? Is that pot you’re smoking? Bring some with you, my dealer moved,” the voice on the other end of the phone jabbered.
“Quit talking you evil bastard,” I said.
“What?” he asked, sounding put off.
I laughed and said, “Just fucking with you. Like I said, I’m just waking up.We had a live one here last night. Who are you with again?”
“The Daytona Daily Journal.”
“I don’t want to sound rude man, but I don’t recall sending you any clips,” I said, getting it off my chest in an attempt to get to the bottom of this surreal conversation.
“You didn’t, I spoke with Ty, your managing editor at the Herald. He told me you were taking a leave of absence but that you also probably needed the money. He’s booked he can’t make it.”
That bastard. He’d sold me out. Some how, despite my official leave of absence, he had found a way to haunt me.
“You talked to Ty?” I asked.
“Yeah, he and I went to high school together in Metairie. I wanted him to come down so we could tear up the town but he’s bogged down. So I asked him who his best man was and he said his best man was on some sort of weird sabbatical, something about a master’s degree. But you’re that man.”
Meg was till bouncing and smoking the joint. She raked her nails down my stomach and made a grab for my cock but I moved her hand away, and instead, motioned for the joint. She handed it to me and I took a big hit. The jig was up. He was drinking beers in his newsroom and I was smoking a joint.
He continued, “I looked through your stories which were in the online archives and I loved what you did with that livestock show piece. It was the funniest thing I’ve ever read. It took balls to write it, and stupidity for Ty to run it as it was. But it was classic.”
I vaguely remembered what he was talking about. It was a light piece, more satirical than anything, which was coverage for an adult showmanship contest at the local district livestock show.
“We have three events over the next two weeks I want you to cover,” he went
on. “And I don’t want traditional coverage mind you now. I want you to go for the cultural angle of it. The fans, the freaks, the hangers-on.”
“What events?” I asked, taking a seat next to Meg hitting the joint with the
feeling I needed it to deal with what he was about to dish out.
“The state’s lady mud wrestling final showdown, a huge porn convention which every religious right activist has been picketing for the past two months and then, the grand mother lode of them all,” he muttered. “Are you sitting down?”
“Yes dammit, what is it?”
“You’re going to fucking love this, the Daytona 500,” he said.
“Mud wrestling,” I said, my brain trying to spin with ideas.
“Yes and the porn convention but also the Daytona 500, how cool is that? I’ve gone every year for the past six years but my wife his having family down that weekend and I have to be here. That bitch.”
As the possibilities of it all dangled before my eyes, the grim reality set
in.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I think you have the wrong man. I’m on leave. I couldn’t afford one night in Florida, much less two weeks. And I’m traveling with wife and child; an older child, illegitimate at that, but still my responsibility.”
“Expenses covered, I have you put up in one of these extended stay motel suites. It’s not the Hilton by a long shot but not a roach motel either. There is a $2,000 expense account for meals and gas, and $500 per story. I don’t want shabby work though. I read you’re livestock thing, I want that but about three times longer, 3,000 word minimum for all three.”
Despite the drug haze I did the math in my head. It seemed odd to me that the expense account was greater than the actual price for the articles. After some mental calculations I realized $2,000 for breakfast, lunch and dinner, for two weeks broke down to about $50 per meal for three people. It was meager. But meals could be supplemented by booze and drugs.
Meg, who had reclined on my lap as I listened to this guy’s offer, suddenly
sat up, opened the film container and snorted a big bump of coke.
“I want to mud wrestle,” she said.
“The mud wrestling thing, you said those were finals? No more contestants, my
wife wants to enter,” I told him. “What’s the prize?”
“Oh man, are you kidding, it’s $5 grand. It’s an open contest though. A lot of women are in the playoffs, but it’s still open to challengers. It’s ugly business though. You don’t want your wife doing this,” he said. “Seriously, those women don’t fuck around, half of them are on steroids, the rest of them have no teeth, mostly biker bitches.”
“Well $5 grand is a lot of money,” I said.
It was at this point that Meg jumped up, looking as if she were in the grips of some sort of ugly seizure.
“Give me that fucking phone, give it to me she said,” snatching it out of my hand before I could even react.
“I’ll take on any bitch,” she screamed at him. “I’ll hold their head under the mud until they drown and shit muddy crap, you hear me dammit.”
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. Carpe diem, she had seized the day. I didn’t have Rhino tranquilizers so there was no stopping her.I sunk deeper into the sofa watching the hopes of the $2,100 for assignments, the expense account, and free hotel stay vanish just as fast as they had been offered to me.
I was paralyzed. I was fucked. We were all doomed. I no longer wanted her. I wanted to kill her. But the veins bulging from her forehead, her muscle structure when she tensed up, the tears of anger running down her cheeks, and the red corpuscles exploding under the flesh of her face were too much to handle.
She was out of control. She scared me.
“No, fuck you. That’s right I said fuck you, can you hear me, fuck you,” she hollered into the telephone, her voice rose to a deathly decibel level. “I’ll fuck you up too. I’m not afraid of any man. Did Brett tell you I laid a fucker out flat two nights ago. He tried to start shit just like you, I’ll kill you fucker, what’s your name?”
The job was blown at this point. However, fear of neighbors, the landlord and local cops began to become reality again.
It was just about this time that Jeff finally staggered into the living room in his boxers, with vomits stains still on his chin and gut.
“What the fuck is going on in here?” he asked, turning off the Marley.
Thank you, I mouthed to him.
She, however, contorted into another violent convulsion of rage of sorts when Jeff turned off the Marley tape.
“Put it back on fat boy or I’ll fucking kill you,” she screamed.
“Shut up bitch,” he replied. “I’ll smack you in the fucking jaw.”
With this, she grabbed the leg of a small end table, upsetting a pitcher of god knows what in the process and hurled it at Jeff’s head, while still managing to spew verbal threats to Randy on the other end of the phone.
This was multi tasking at its ugly worst. Yet she seemed adept at it.
Jeff grabbed the closest object next to him, the broom, and she picked up an
empty bottle of Cuervo from the bookcase and threw it at his head.
He barely ducked, missing it.
“Put the fucking tape back on,” she yelled again. “What are you going to do rape me with the broomstick? It’s bigger than your dick. Come on, cut all my hair off, tie me up, rape me with the broomstick. Sharpen it to an edge. You can’t fucking hurt me.”
Shaken, Jeff nervously grasped for a tape, any tape, and put it back in the deck. Unfortunately, it was the tape with a Hole triad on it; Miss World, Take Anything, and The Girl with the Most Cake.
This urged her onward and she let loose with another string of obscenities into the phone.
“Fuck you,” she screamed. “You don’t think I know where you live, where you work? I’ll kill you, sodomize your wife with a hot curling iron and sell your infant to greasy Cubans. I’ll blow your fucking house up. I was in the army, I know all about demolitions.”
She had to be stopped. The madness had gone on long enough. Jeff was working his way around the recliner with the broomstick still in hand. It was at about this point that he lunged toward her, taking a swipe at her ankles.
What happened next was a blur. She moved with the efficiency of Bruce Lee, and inside three seconds the phone was hurled at me, Jeff was on his back with her foot on his throat and the end of the broomstick, the business end, shoved into the skin under his eyeball.
“Stop it, drop it, put it down before I fill you with enough voltage to make you feel like an electric eel,” I yelled, holding the remote control to the television. “Yeah, that’s right, I’ll TASER your sorry ass.”
At this point she stopped to a degree. She took her foot and broom handle off of Jeff and faced me ready for combat. Yet something in her demeanor had changed.
She was getting tired.
“You’d do that to me wouldn’t you?” she said, more a statement than question.
“Damn right woman, disarm yourself,” I said.
“I can’t believe it, I can’t believe you Bret,” she said.
There are no words that can properly explain the feeling that was exchanged
when her eyes finally locked onto mine as I stood there panting, crouched with the remote in my hand.
Despite the fact that she was the one who had lost her nugget, taken up arms and attacked her hosts, I was in the wrong here. The look in her eyes quickly shifted from animal rage to one of hurt disbelief.
Her chest heaved mightily and her body began to quiver.
She continued, “I can’t believe you would shock me like a damned animal. But you would. You want me to be screaming and wiggling on your floor, just a subdued bitch. I thought you were different. I liked you.”
I didn’t know her whole story. Nor did I want to. But something before this 24-hour period of drugs and beer had led her to this point. This I knew. There was no telling what. She could have been beat up; she could have been raped. It could have been a long stint of prolonged, deliberate incest. At some time, in some way, a man had hurt this woman badly physically, emotionally and spiritually.
And whatever tiny bridge of trust she had tried to extend to me, to man
in general, I had just snatched away. I had betrayed her with words and a television remote control that barely worked on my TV, much less 135 pounds of taught, sinuous, cocaine-induced buried rage that knew how to fight.
But she was still holding the broom, aimed and leveled at my throat.
“Drop the fucking broom,” I yelled, my own voice scaring me. “If you want to
talk about surprises I can’t believe you’re ready to shove a fucking broom handle through my throat.”
With this she dropped the broom and began to violently cry. But not before I
saw Jeff launched into a body tackle. I yelled for him to stop but it was too late. She turned only to meet his arm and shoulder hoisting her up by her stomach. They crashed into my front door with a sickening thud and then she threw up.
They were still in a crumpled heap with her still throwing up on his back
when someone began banging on the door.
“Landlord,” said the familiar voice of Darren, my landlord.
Jeff and Meg were on their feet in seconds. We all looked at each other, suddenly scared shitless. Before he knocked again they had scrambled to the bathroom.
He beat on the door again and said, “I know you’re in there.”
“I’m sick,” I said, slowly opening the door.
“What the fuck is going on in there,” he asked, trying to tippy-toe, look
over my shoulder.
“I’m sick,” I said, which was convincing enough because of the fresh smell of vomit, which had somehow gotten smeared on me.
“What the hell is all the banging and music about?” he asked.
“I fell down,” I said.
I could tell by the look in his eyes that he didn’t buy it.
“What, 20 times in the past two days, the music, where’s your fat friend?” he asked.
“He’s gone, he left days ago,” I said.
“Well, he’s got until tomorrow to get his car out of here or it is going to be towed,” he said.
“You’d be doing us a favor,” I mumbled.
“What was that?” he asked.
Damn Nazi.
“Tow the fucker, I don’t care,” I said.
“That’s what I thought you said,” he countered, looking like he expected something. “I need your rent check too.”
“You dirty swine,” I said.
“What was that?”
“I said you’re an assuming swine. Assuming I have to pay my rent in check when I have the fucking cash,” I said.
He tried to inch up again, look into my apartment and I blocked the door further.
“You looking for something,” I asked him, digging into my pocket, belching.
I fished out $300 and put it in his hand and told him to get out of my face.
“I have the right to enter your apartment at any time,” he whined. “I am the renter and you are my tenant.”
I was growing so sick of his macho, bull-dog act so I finally stepped aside, flung the door open and told him, “Then go on in. I’m not scared of you.”
Then I thought better of it and stood back in his path and said, “No, you know what, come back when you have a search warrant you miserable, pig-fucking slum lord. And when you do come back bring your damned tool kit, my oven door, dishwasher and garbage disposal are still broken. It’s been what, two years now.”
He backed up.
“That’s what I thought, shit give me back a hundred until you fix it,” I said, suddenly pushed over the edge.
“You used to be a good tenant,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell is going on in there but I know it isn’t good. People have been calling day and night, threatening to call the cops. I’ve been covering for you though. I’d suggest you straighten out your act.”
“Yes sir,” I said, saluting him as he finally, irritated, ambled away.
I’d barely shut the door when the phone rang, the one with the cord.
The apartment was quieter than it had been for weeks, since Jeff first pulled into my parking lot with a thrown rod, announcing he needed to travel to Orlando to pick up the remnants of his belongings.
The ringing pierced the inordinate still like an unwanted intruder. Who the hell could be calling now? Had that bastard of a landlord already made it to a landline, called the police? No. If he had they would be they would already be pounding on my door armed with full riot gear, smoke grenades, tear gas, blackjacks, the works.
I warily staked up to the ringing bastard and answered, my voice cracking in the process.
“Brett, this is Randy. Damn that was beautiful. I have your wife entered. She’s in the mud wrestling tournament. She was fucking awesome. She puts the entire WWF to shame. She’s a born natural. Was a great act on her part, very, very convincing. I just need to get some preliminary facts about her from you. And I talked to the publisher, $1,000 for each story, 1,500 words each and your expense account has been upped to $5,000. We just need that old Brett magic, okay buddy.”
He hadn’t even completed his first sentence before I wanted to drop the phone. I did actually, recoiling in horror, shock and disbelief. The phone was on the floor but his voice carried well enough for me to hear it all. I crouched down, listening as he said these ugly things to me.
“Warren, Warren are you there?” he asked.
I quickly picked up the phone from the floor.
“I slipped on some ice, dropped the phone. Did you say a grand for each
story?” I stammered, opening a beer.
“There you go, Salud,” he yelled, snapping the top of another beer. “That’s what I said, three grand for the stories, five for expenses. And you didn’t hear this from me but the publisher completely digs your work, she mentioned something about hiring you.”
“Quit lying to me you ugly bastard. This sort of thing isn’t good for a man’s nerves.”
“I’m not shitting you,” he said. “I mean lets face it, even Ty admitted it.
The type of assignments they give you at that Podunk outfit are beneath you. That’s what Ty said. He said that’s why you took the leave of absence.”
I grinned to myself. Naturally Ty didn’t tell him about me pissing in the front seat of our publishers car after happy hour at the local press watering hole. Apparently, Ty hadn’t mentioned me getting caught smoking dope on the loading dock, or mention the fact that I told the local school board public affairs woman I thought she was a lying cunt when she refused to give me needed information on a make or break deadline day.
Or maybe Ty had told him. The man seemed to have a genuine streak of the
village idiot in him. Only a mere ten minutes ago my “wife” was threatening to blow his house up.What sort of madman was I really dealing with here?
“So what’s your point man?” I asked.
“I need you down here to take these assignments and it could mean permanent
relocation, a regular job,” he said.
Knowing I’d regret it later, and against all my better judgment, I grabbed a reporter pad and pen and began to take down addresses and phone numbers.
He’d made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
