Seven

Gavin's last story was about a fire in Brooklyn. It was a horrible assignment, the worst he'd ever had to do. A nine-year-old girl had died and every time he thought of her he thought of Chloe. He went to the scene and stood across the street from the burned-out apartment. Three windows on the fourth floor were blackened holes in the brick, smoke stains rising toward the sky. Shattered glass glittered on the sidewalk below. He longed at that moment to be anywhere else.

"It's a nightmare we can't wake up from," neighbor Sarah Connelly said. "I keep thinking of her playing hopscotch on the street the way she used to in the summertime, and I just can't believe she's gone."

The day after the story came out Gavin was summoned into a conference room. Julie was there, along with the editor-in-chief and, unnervingly, the directors of the personnel and legal departments. All four stared at him as he sat down. Gavin sat on one side of the confer ence room table, and the four of them sat on the other. He wasn't sure where to look. For a long moment no one spoke, until Julie cleared her throat.

   "Gavin, I spoke with Jacob Fischer this morning," Julie said.

   Gavin opened his mouth, but didn't speak.

   "The Alkaitis investor who lost his retirement," Julie said, apparently interpreting his silence as confusion. " Turns out he doesn't have a wife."

   "You can't be serious," Gavin said. It was difficult to summon the appropriate tones of incredulity and lightness, but he managed. "The woman I quoted, Amy Torren, she said she was Fischer's—"

   "Aren't you curious to know why I was speaking with him?"

   "I—"

   "I called him because the dead girl's mother called the paper last night," Julie said. She was looking at him as if she'd never seen him before. He noticed that she was very pale. "The mother of that girl who died in the fire in Brooklyn. Apparently the dead kid didn't play hopscotch."

   "Well, look," Gavin said, "the neighbor said she used to play hopscotch all the time. Maybe she played hopscotch while the mother wasn't home."

   "She was in a wheelchair," Julie said.

   It was clear from the way she was looking at Gavin that everything was over, absolutely everything, so Gavin stood up from the table and left the room without saying anything else. He went back to his desk, picked up his bag and fedora and walked out of the newsroom without speaking to anyone. Outside the air was very bright, and he pulled his fedora low over his eyes. It was only one in the afternoon. He couldn't face his empty apartment yet, the leaking shower and the piles of paper on the floor, so he turned south and walked all the way down to Battery Park City, stood looking out at the Statue of Liberty for a while before he turned inland and wandered into the Financial District. He lingered in various bars and small parks all day. In the evening he made his way home through the darkening city, let himself into his apartment and sat for a while on his sofa staring at the opposite wall. The dripping from the shower made a constant, almost musical sound. He was drunk, drifting in and out of sleep. It seemed improbable that he was no longer a newspaperman. It seemed like something that might have happened to somebody else.