Baby, Would I Lie?

6

The Weekly Galaxy hospitality suite was jumping when Sara arrived a little after five o’clock. Three connecting rooms of sofas and easy chairs and big-screen satellite TV. A bar in each room, with a generous gent in a black bow tie behind each one. White cloth — covered tables offered the kind of airy snacks that stave off hunger without protecting from inebriation. And present for the largesse were many representatives of the fourth estate.

The first thing for Sara to do was get a full glass, for protective coloration. A few customers were ahead of her at the bar she chose, giving her an opportunity to see just how lavish a hand these bartenders had, so when her turn came, she asked for a white wine spritzer with lots of ice, and then, as she moved among the three rooms, she didn’t drink it. Nor did she stop to chat with anyone; at first, all she wanted here was a general feel of the occasion.

The occasion was unbuttoned, is what it was. Mostly, these were the entertainment reporters of our news-hungry nation, more of them from television than print, and more from cable than network, which meant the room wasn’t exactly awash in high-flown rhetoric about the nobility of the journalistic profession. These were mostly wannabes, people who’d started covering showbiz only after they’d given up their own showbiz dreams. Many garage bands, many regional theater productions, many department-store modeling jobs, many public access-channel shows, all shimmered in the past around these people, giving them that weird edge, that manner of caring passionately about something they don’t care anything about at all. It can pass for sophistication, in the dark, with the light behind it.

While she wandered around, getting a sense of the scene, of the people here, the kind of journalist assembled for this story — okay, the competition, if you insist — familiar faces from the bad old Galaxy days, familiarly ravaged, passed by from time to time. She made no effort to establish contact. Principal among these faces and among the most ravaged were the Down Under Trio, those practiced enticers, hard at work sabotaging American journalism. Sara saw them one at a time, sheepdogging their victims to the party.

Harry Razza she saw first, the matinee idol who’d told her about this cheery reporter trap. He came in with a pair of girls all in dark leather, who had perfected the ability to giggle and sneer at the same time, so they were definitely from either a teenage magazine or MTV. Harry gave them to some boys and left.

A little later, Sara saw another of the Down Unders, Bob Sangster, the one with the big nose and an easy working-class manner, who had reeled in an older gent smoking a pipe and wearing leather elbow patches, a former reporter retired to People, probably. And sometime after that, in came Louis B. Urbiton with a pair of scruffy thirtyish proles under his wing, urban cowboys who’d dressed themselves down at the mall exclusively in imitations — polyester and vinyl. These must be reporters from one of the Galaxy’s direct imitators, the Star or the National Enquirer or one of those. True competitors, in other words, toward whom no mercy would be shown.

Louis delivered his latest bag to the tender mercies of the nearest bartender, clapped them on the back, and departed, staggering only slightly, eyes only a bit redder and wetter than usual. It was a tough dirty job, but somebody had to do it. And none better than the Down Under Trio.

“Sara!”

That had sounded more like a cry for help than a greeting, and when Sara looked around, she saw why. It was Binx Radwell who had called to her, a fog of free-floating angst in the shape of a man. A blond guy in his mid-thirties, Binx Radwell had a more or less normal head and body, except that it was all covered by a quivering padded layer of baby fat. Then equal parts of panic and perspiration had been larded on top of it all, as though he were about to be put on a spit for several hours over an open fire. Given the usual expression in Binx’s eyes, that’s exactly what he expected to happen, any minute.

Sara’s invariable reaction to Binx was helpless pity combined with helpless impatience. Why didn’t he just pull his socks up, for heaven’s sake? Why was he always so afraid all the time?

Well, she knew why. He worked for the Galaxy, that’s why, and he lived with his wife Marcie and their children at the very outer edge of his income; disaster was never more than one false step away. A couple of years ago, in fact, Binx had actually been fired, not because he’d been doing anything worse than usual but merely as an example to the troops. Having been an editor, and very well paid, he’d floundered and wept and semidrowned for a little while, and then the Galaxy had hired him back... as a reporter, at half the salary.

So Binx had every right to look the way he did, which was like an abused child. Giving her pity free rein, reining in her impatience, she said, “Binx, how are you? You look great,” she lied.

“So do you, Sara.” He tried a smile, Binx did, which looked very much like an expression you might see in the display case at the fish market. “Marcie and I are thinking about a separation,” he said, lying right back at her.

“Oh, you and Marcie were born for each other,” Sara assured him.

Binx looked more stricken than ever. “You really think so?”

Looking around, Sara said, “Whose team is this? Not Boy Cartwright, I hope,” she said, naming her least-favorite Galaxy editor.

Within his terror, Binx looked almost pleased, proud of himself. “My team,” he said with simple modesty.

Delighted, Sara said, “Binx! You’re an editor again!”

“After Massa died—”

“What? Massa died?”

Deadpan, he said, “Massa’s in de cold, cold ground.”

Bewildered, not getting it, Sara said, “You’re kidding me.”

“You hadn’t heard? Come over here,” Binx said, taking her elbow, fondling it, leading her to the quietest corner of the room, saying, “It’s true. It happened at the morning editorial meeting. He was yelling at the editors, you know, yelling there weren’t any good stories anymore, pounding on the table and waving that beer bottle around, and all of a sudden, he made the most kind of a jungle sound, all deep and loud and rattly — we could hear it way over at the reporter tables — and flop. Right on his desk, in the elevator.”

Massa, actual name Bruno DeMassi, was the creator and owner and publisher of the Weekly Galaxy, a man of many appetites, most of them gross. “That’s hard to believe,” Sara said. “The Galaxy without Massa.”

“It was so weird, Sara,” Binx told her. “He just lay there face down, arms stretched out, spilling his beer, and he twitched a couple times, and nobody wanted to go near him, and finally Boy went over. You know how he simpers and does that English accent.”

“Oh, don’t remind me.”

“Oh, good, you remember,” Binx said. “Boy said, ‘Chief? Chief?’ And he touched Massa, and then he turned around, and he was very solemn and he put his hand over his heart like Napoleon, and he said, ‘The Chief is with us no more. The Chief is dead.’ And somebody — nobody knows who, just somebody — somebody said, ‘And we have a new Pope.’ And everybody started to laugh.” Binx blinked in remembered amazement. “Nobody could stop,” he said. “It got everybody. There’s Massa lying dead on his desk, and hundreds and hundreds of people laughing. It went all through the building, upstairs, downstairs, people holding their sides, people falling down on the floor, they were laughing so hard. And even when Jacob Harsch came down from the top floor to find out what was going on, nobody could stop. It just went on and on.” Binx slowly shook his head, his sweaty round face pinkly incandescent with the leftover glow of the awe of that transcendent moment.

“Is Harsch running the Galaxy now?” Sara asked. Jacob Harsch had been Massa’s assistant, as cold as Massa had been hot.

But Binx said, “Oh no. He’s out. They brought some people up from hell to run things.”

“Hell? What do you mean?”

“It turned out,” Binx said, “there was some sort of corporation deal, and when Massa died, all this money went to his widow, and a corporation owns us. They’re a Florida real estate development company, so you can imagine.”

“Barely,” Sara said.

“They took their most evil executives,” Binx said, “the ones that snap at sticks you put through the bars of the cage, and they put them in charge of us. Oh, Sara,” Binx said, and fondled her forearm this time, “you got out when the getting was good.”

“I guess so,” Sara said, and they were interrupted at that point by the arrival of Don Grove, the world’s most pessimistic reporter, another former coworker of Sara’s, who this time ignored Sara and turned his doleful countenance on Binx, saying, “I don’t suppose you could use—”

“You remember Sara, Don,” Binx said.

Don considered Sara, considered his answer. “Yes,” he decided, and turned back to Binx. “I don’t suppose you could use the dead woman’s grandmother, got proof the family’s related to Princess Di.”

“We’re spreading that story, Don,” Binx said.

“Oh.” Don nodded at Sara. “Nice to see you again,” he said without enthusiasm, and went away.

Binx looked fondly after his retreating reporter. “Good old Don,” he said. “He’s one of the few things in life that keeps me cheerful.”

“Oh, you,” Sara said. “You’re just sunny by nature.”