The Shining Girls

Kirby ^{13 APRIL 1992}

‘Hey, intern.’ Matt Harrison is standing over the desk with an elderly gentleman in a blue suit like somebody’s dapper hep-cat grandfather.

‘Hey, ed.’ Kirby casually slides a file over the letter she’s been writing to the lawyer of Julia Madrigal’s supposed teen murderers. Joint defense, which tells you something – that they didn’t turn on each other to try to get a shorter sentence.

She’s squatting at one of the culture writer’s desks because Dan is away so much he doesn’t actually have a desk, let alone one she can share. She’s supposed to be compiling all the information she can on Sammy Sosa and Greg Maddux after the Cubs’ win.

‘You want to do a real story?’ Matt asks. He’s in a remarkably good mood, kicking back on his heels. She knew she shouldn’t have brought herself to his attention. Dammit.

‘You think I’m ready?’ she says in a way that means it depends.

‘You heard about the flooding this morning?’

‘Hard to miss half the Loop being evacuated.’

‘They’re estimating billions in damages. There’ve been reports of fish in the basement of the Merchandise Mart. We’re calling it The Great Chicago Flood, like the Great Chicago Fire.’

‘Historical in-jokes. I like it. They punched through an old coal tunnel by accident, right?’

‘Brought the whole river gushing in. If you believe that. But Mr Brown here,’ he indicates the dressed-to-the-nines old man, ‘has a different take on it and I was hoping you might be willing to interview him about it. If you have the time.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Normally I wouldn’t want you to write outside your beat, but this thing is a big, soggy mess and we’re struggling to cover every angle.’

‘Sure.’ Kirby shrugs.

‘Attagirl. Mr Brown, please have a seat.’ He swings a chair round and stands by, his arms folded. ‘Don’t mind me. I’m supervising.’

‘Hold on, let me find a pen.’ Kirby scrabbles in the desk drawer.

‘I hope you’re not going to waste my time.’ The old man scowls up at Matt. He has very thin eyebrows, barely there at all, which makes him look more fragile. His hands are trembling slightly. Parkinson’s or just old age. He must be in his eighties. She wonders if he dressed up especially to come down here.

‘Not at all.’ Kirby paws out a ballpoint and poises it over the pad of paper. ‘I’m ready when you are. Should we start with what you saw?’ she says. ‘Were you there when they busted through the tunnel?’

‘I didn’t see it.’

‘Okay. So tell me why you’re here. The bridge repair company? I heard Mayor Daley put it out for tender to the lowest bidder.’

‘You do pay attention,’ Matt says.

‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ Kirby snaps, with just enough smile in her voice to avoid alarming sweet Mr Brown.

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ the old man says, his voice quavering.

‘Interview technique 101. You should probably let him speak,’ Matt advises. ‘Does Velasquez teach you nothing?’

‘I’m sorry. Why don’t you tell me what you wanted to talk about? I’m listening.’

Mr Brown looks to Matt for reassurance, and he nods tightly to say she’s okay. The old man chews on his lip and gives a heavy sigh, then he leans forward across the desk and hisses: ‘Aliens.’

In the second it takes for it to sink in, Kirby realizes how quiet the rest of the newsroom has been this whole damn time.

‘Aaaaand I think you can handle it from here,’ Matt says with a grin, walking away. Abandoning her with the crazy old man, who is nodding so hard his entire head judders on the stalk of his neck.

‘Oh yes. They don’t like it when we go delving in to the river. They live under there. They’re hydrogen-based, obviously.’

‘Obviously.’ Behind her back, Kirby gives the finger to the rest of the newsroom, who are falling around trying not to laugh.

‘If it wasn’t for the aliens, we would never have been able to reverse the flow of the river. Engineering, they say – don’t you believe it, my girl. We struck a bargain with them. But we don’t want to provoke them. If they can reverse the river and flood the city, what else do you think they’re capable of?’

‘What else indeed?’ Kirby sighs.

‘Well, write it down,’ Mr Brown gestures impatiently, triggering a fresh round of intently suppressed sniggers.

The bar is a dive. It smells like stale cigarettes and expired chat-up lines.

‘That was really shitty,’ Kirby says, smacking the white ball as hard as she can. Tried and true tactic when you don’t have a decent shot lined up. ‘I had real work to do!’

It was Matt’s suggestion to go play pool with some of the gang after the shift shut down. It turns out to be her, Victoria, Matt and Chet, because Emma has gone to cover the actual flooding.

‘Rite of passage, intern.’ Matt is leaning against the counter, drinking a vodka lime, half-watching CNN on the TV in the corner. He’s supposed to be partnered up with Chet, but he keeps forgetting to take his turn.

‘Brown’s one of the regulars,’ Victoria explains. ‘He shows up every time there’s a water-related story. But we have a bunch of them. What’s the collective for insane people?’

‘A gabble of crazies?’ Kirby offers.

‘There’s a homeless woman who delivers notebooks full of illegible poetry bound up in rubber bands every October. A psychic who phones in offering to help with every single murder story and lost pet in the classifieds. Thank God I only have to deal with faked photos of kiddie porn.’

‘Lot of sports cranks.’ Matt turns away from the news long enough to chip in. ‘You haven’t had to field that yet? Your man Dan refuses to answer the phone when he’s in the office. They call to complain about lousy refs. Lousy managers. Lousy players. Lousy pitch. General lousy.’

‘My favorite is the racist old lady who brings us cookies,’ Chet interrupts.

‘Why doesn’t anyone stop them?’

‘Let me tell you a story, intern,’ Matt proclaims. On the TV, the news has looped itself. As if fifteen minutes of headlines sums up all the world.

‘Oh boy,’ Victoria rolls her eyes affectionately.

Matt ignores her. ‘You been over to the Tribune?’

‘In passing, sure,’ Kirby says. She clips the white ball on the side and it goes cracking across the table, dispersing the cluster by the left corner pocket.

‘Here. You’re just chasing them round the table,’ Victoria says. She corrects Kirby’s grip. ‘Now, lean down over the cue, line it up, and when you’re ready, breathe out steadily as you make the shot.’

‘Thanks, Professor Pool.’ But this time, she sinks the fourteen, sending the white ball on a smooth trajectory to tap it gently into the corner pocket. Kirby straightens up, grinning.

‘Nice work,’ Victoria says. ‘Now you need to concentrate on sinking your color.’

The realization sinks in. ‘We’re solids. Dammit.’ She drops her head in disgrace and shoves the cue at her partner

‘Is anyone listening to my story?’ Matt complains.

‘Yes!’ they shout simultaneously.

‘Good. Now. If you go to Trib Tower, you’ll see that they have pieces of historic rock cemented into the wall outside on the pavement. A bit of brick from the Great Pyramid, the Berlin Wall, the Alamo, the British Houses of Parliament, a piece of Antarctic rock, they’ve even got a chunk of moon in there. You’ve seen it?’

‘Why haven’t they been pried out and stolen?’ Kirby says, ducking out of the way as Chet nearly smacks her with his draw-back.

‘I don’t know. That’s not the point.’

‘The point is that it’s a symbol,’ Chet says, failing to sink his ball. ‘Of the global reach and power of print. It’s a romantic ideal, because that hasn’t been true since Charles Dickens’s time. Or not since television.’

Kirby stares down the cue, willing the ball to go where she wants it. It doesn’t. She stands up, annoyed. ‘How did they even get a piece of the pyramid? Isn’t that illegal artifact smuggling? How did that not cause an international diplomatic scandal?’

‘That is not the point either!’ Matt swishes his glass at them for emphasis, and Kirby realizes that he is fairly drunk. ‘The point is that the Tribune attracts tourists. And we attract crazy people.’

‘That’s because they have actual security. You have to sign in at reception. Folk come to us and they can walk out the elevator straight into the newsroom.’

‘We’re the people’s paper, Anwar. We have to be accessible. It’s the principle.’

‘You’re drunk, Harrison,’ Victoria steers the news editor away to a booth. ‘Come on, I’ll buy you something caffeinated. Leave the young people alone.’

Chet waves his cue at the abandoned game. ‘Want to carry on playing?’

‘Nah. I suck. Want to come outside with me for some air? The smoke in here is killing me.’

They stand around uneasily on the curb. The Loop is emptying out, the last of the business crowd heading home via whatever detours the flooding has forced them to take. Chet fiddles with his bird-skull ring, suddenly shy.

‘So yeah,’ he starts, ‘you’ll learn to spot them. The cranks. Whatever you do, avoid eye contact, and if you make the mistake of engaging, dump them on somebody else as soon as possible.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ Kirby says.

‘Do you smoke?’ Chet says, hopefully.

‘No, that’s why I had to get out of the bar. I can’t do it any more. It hurts my stomach too much when I cough.’

‘Oh. Yes. I read about that. I mean, I read up on you.’

‘Thought you might.’

‘Being a librarian.’

‘Yeah.’ She asks as casually as she can, trying not to let the hope shine through: ‘Learn anything I don’t already know?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’ He laughs nervously. ‘I mean, you were there.’

She recognizes the note of reverence in his voice and feels the old familiar despair.

‘Sure was,’ she says, chirpy. She’s not helping, she knows, but she’s pissed that he’s in awe of what happened to her. It’s not that great, she wants to say. Girls get murdered all the fucking time.

‘I was thinking, though?’ he says, helplessly trying to bridge the gap. Too late, Kirby thinks.

‘Yeah?’

He rushes in, headlong. ‘There’s this graphic novel I think you should read. It’s about this girl, she’s had something horrible happen to her, and she creates this whole magical dreamworld in her head, and there’s this homeless guy who becomes her protector superhero, and spirit animals. It’s amazing. Really amazing.’

‘It sounds… great.’ She’d thought he’d be cooler about it. But that’s her problem, not his. It’s not his fault. She should have seen it coming a mile off.

‘I guess I thought you’d find it interesting.’ He looks miserable. ‘Or useful. It sounds really dumb when I say it now.’

‘Maybe you can lend it to me when you’re done,’ she says in a way that says please don’t. Please just forget it and never bring it up again because my life is not a fucking comic book. She changes the subject to try to save them from themselves and the sucking hole of awkwardness opening up between them. ‘So, Victoria and Matt?’

‘Oh God!’ he brightens. ‘On-and-off for years. Worst-kept secret ever.’

Kirby tries to muster enthusiasm for office gossip, but she doesn’t actually give a shit. She could ask him about his love-life, but that would only open up questions about her own. The last guy was someone from her philosophy of science class, spiky and smart and good-looking in an interesting way. But in bed, he turned out to be unbearably tender. He kissed her scars as if he could magic them away with the ministrations of his tongue. ‘Hey, I’m up here,’ she’d had to say after enduring him kissing over her stomach, gently working his way across every inch of scar tissue. ‘Or a little further down. Your call, baby.’ Needless to say, it didn’t last.

‘It’s really cute the way they pretend,’ she manages now, which only serves to drop them into stunted silence again.

‘Oh.’ Chet digs in his jeans pocket. ‘Is this yours?’ He hands over a piece cut from the classifieds on Saturday.

Of course she put it in the Sun-Times, but also all the other papers and local community broadsheets, as well as posting flyers on noticeboards in grocery stores and women’s centers and headshops from Evanston to Skokie.

‘Yeah. It was Dan’s idea.’

‘Cool,’ he says.

‘What?’ Kirby is annoyed.

‘Just be careful.’

‘Yeah, okay, anyway. I have to go.’

‘Right. Me too,’ Chet says. It’s plainly a relief for both of them. ‘Should we say goodbye to them?’

‘I think they’ll be fine. Which way are you heading?’

‘Red line.’

‘I’m the other way.’ This is a lie. But she can’t stand the thought of trying to continue conversation on the walk to the station. She should know better by now than to try and connect with people.