I had been covering a gallery opening. That’s what my life looks like. When someone in Vancouver puts together some kind of party and they want the press there, they put my name at the top of the list.
It might be to raise money for people left homeless by fire. Or when some politician writes a book. Or a developer has a big new project. Whatever.
A few publicists have told me that when I turn up at one of their events, it’s a good sign. “Sure, the snacks were swell,” they might say. “And the music was great. But did Nicole Charles come?” And if I did, everyone is glad. I never get used to that.
Every day, Bryce the mail guy delivers a thick stack of invites to my desk on the fifth floor of the Vancouver Post building. I spend an hour or so each day looking through them. Sometimes the mail includes gifts or food, which I don’t want and cannot keep.
My email has just as many invitations, though no food or gifts. I notice when I get an email invite followed by a snail-mail invitation followed by still another email. It means they’ve got the money to be paying for more promotion. Not just the email, which everyone knows is cheap to do.
Lots of invites means the food at the party in question will be good. If you have a big pile of invitations, why not pick the one that’s going to have the best food? Most of my fellow journalists would find a lot of things wrong with that, so I don’t tell them. I have to pick somehow, don’t I? I have to choose. That seems as good a way as any.
There are times when I have no choice. In those cases, one of my editors or a big shot from the business end will hand me an invitation. “It would be lovely to see you and your camera there, Nicole. I know it will be a good party.” They say it like it really is an invitation. But since they’re bosses, they have power over me. I generally put the invitations they hand me near the top of the pile. Then I make sure I go to that party. I go early enough in the evening that everyone isn’t drunk. That way I can get photos of all the beautiful people while they’re still looking beautiful.
The day of the night Steve Marsh died, Erica West, sales manager, stopped by my desk. She said she was on her way home. Since her office is on the seventh floor and mine is on the fifth, I found it odd.
“Darling Nicole,” she said brightly as she popped her head into my cubicle. “You look dashing today. Can a woman be dashing? If she can, then you are.”
Dashing. I looked down at myself. Tried to think what I was doing to have earned it. But nothing about my black pants, black blouse or even the black leather jacket slung over the back of my chair seemed dashing to me.
“Uh…thanks, Erica. You look…kinda dashing yourself.”
And she did. At five foot five, my height is average. I have brown hair and brown eyes. Fairly average as well.
Erica is not average. She’s tall. Close to six feet in the heels she always wears. And she looks even taller when she piles her hair on top of her head, as she had today. She was engaged to the publisher. Not just my boss, but the boss of my whole world. Like a god on his throne up there on the seventh floor in a corner office with a view of the North Shore.
“Darling,” the drama queen said. I’ve never known anyone who can pull off the whole “darling” thing quite like Erica. I thought of her standing in front of a mirror while she practiced saying it. You’d have to, really, to make it come out that smooth.
Erica came closer to my desk. I thought I saw her swallow distaste while she avoided looking at my tiny work space too closely.
She handed me a gold-and-black invitation. It looked expensive. That meant there’d be excellent snacks for sure.
“You’ve met Steve Marsh,” she said.
“No,” I said. Erica scares me. She always has. And she’s scary, so I’ve probably got the right idea.
She raised one eyebrow but didn’t say anything for a moment. “Hmmmm,” she said finally. And then again. “Hmmmm.”
“What?” I said, trying to be brave. “I haven’t met him. So?”
“His uncle is a friend of mine,” she said. “I promised we’d cover his opening.”
I stopped myself from asking her what she’d been thinking. After all, she’s not my boss. In the newspaper business, the sales department is equal to editorial, not above it. She really had no business even talking to me. She wouldn’t, that is, if I was a real reporter, I reminded myself. I’d discovered that the society beat fit somewhere else. I wasn’t sure exactly where. But it was clearly below both regular beat reporter and the sales department.
I didn’t fool myself. When it came to being a reporter, I was as low as anyone could go and still carry a press pass. I was twenty-seven, not that many years out of journalism school. I had a union job. A lot of my friends were still covering school-board meetings and minor hockey for small papers in small towns. That was when they’d been able to find a job.
Even when the news industry is at its best, it’s tough to find a job. This wasn’t one of those times. I’d been at the right place at the right time and had ended up with my own beat on the largest metro daily west of Toronto. The fact that my beat was easy enough that Bryce the mail guy could have done it was something I tried not to think about. But it was the truth.
There’s a rhythm to my job. When someone plans a public event for some company or organization, they hope the news agencies will send a reporter. If they hope it’s someone from the Vancouver Post, I get sent. I arrive in party clothes with a high-end digital camera so small it fits in my purse.
When the publicist sees me, she puts a drink in my hand. Then she spends way too much energy trying to make sure I have a good time. But I’m not there for a good time, even if I’m partly there for the snacks. These are not my friends and coworkers. I’m doing my job.
Every event, I try to make sure I get at least one good boob shot. This was not my idea. My predecessor was an old guy. Like a lot of people at our newspaper, he was carried out of the building in a box. Union newspaper jobs are hard to find. No one leaves unless they have to.
It’s not like the States, where the next metro daily is just across the street. In Canada, you can count the big papers on both hands. Maybe add in the toes on one foot if you’re not too picky.
So the old guy before me blazed the trail. He let the publishing team know that breasts sell newspapers. My column always has to have breasts. Since I tend to cover evening events, they are usually in good supply. Plus, the society women have worked out the whole boobie angle and wave them in my face as soon as I walk in the door. Sometimes it makes me wish I was a guy or a lesbian. All those barely covered boobs are wasted on me. But I know the people reading the paper want to see them, so I get them into as many photos as I can.
It’s not just boobs that make my column. I always get at least one handsome-couple shot. He’ll have a strong jaw. She’ll have a heart-shaped face. Both of them will have teeth whiter than the paper the picture gets printed on. Of course, any famous people who are there make the cut. People like to see the celebs as much as they apparently need to see boobs.
Some nights, I only have one event to attend. Most of the time, I’m running around town getting to all the events on my list. After my stops have been made and the photos taken, I go home or back to the office and choose which photos will run. Then I write all my clever captions and, if there’s room, a witty couple of column inches on each event.
The stars were out tonight! Theater under the stars, that is. Or, at least, anyone who’s anyone who works with them. Martinis flowed while maidens delivered angels on horseback. This reporter thought that was an entirely appropriate touch, considering that the first production of the season will be a musical version of Equus. Elsa Bergermeister glowed in a gown by Vancouver’s own Catherine Bert while her daughters, Sara-belle and Jenna-belle, wore Stella McCartney designs selected from the current collection.
And other stuff like that. None of it high art. None of it what I trained for. None of it doing anything beyond scratching the well-dressed surface.
But then, who trains for this? Does anyone go to journalism school and say, “When I graduate, I want to be the chick who goes to parties and writes about everyone”? Everyone wants to report crime or war, which, these days, is almost the same. When you study journalism, you want to tame the mean streets. You want to solve the city’s problems. To be like a cop with a keyboard and smartphone instead of a gun.
Then life happens. I was lucky. I wanted a byline in the first section. Sure I did. But not enough to kill for it.
Then a dead guy almost fell into my lap. And everything changed.