ELLISON FELT THE SATISFYING SENSATION OF FLESH YIELDING BETWEEN his teeth. He was hungrier than he had realized. The afternoon had slipped away as he swiveled between television set and computer screen, phone receiver fixed to his ear, a tide of underlings washing in and out. Lunch had become an afterthought. The arrival of this deli sandwich, warm through the paper wrapping and fragrant upon opening, made his salivary glands water immediately. The hunger he had ignored surged to the fore, presenting him with a hollow feeling in his throat and his gut that had to be filled. What held him back, just for an instant, was the sandwich’s provenance.
Tim Suskind had carried the hot pastrami and Muenster cheese like a sacrificial offering. Ellison might have rejected this blatant ploy if it had not been so perfectly executed, down to the brown mustard and sweet peppers, his favorite sandwich to his exact specifications. He could not refuse. His brand of cream soda to wash it down, Sioux City, was a flourish, but it also sent Ellison a message from his subordinate. This was not an accident. This was not subtle. Ellison admired directness, even in bribery.
“It’s refreshing to have an editor with a real news background for a change,” Suskind was saying. “If I might speak freely,” he added, to which Ellison nodded, since he had an enormous hunk of kaiser roll and several layers of finely sliced pastrami in his mouth. “The place was going to the dogs. All fluff.”
“Aren’t you,” Ellison said, mouth still half full, but moved to speak by a powerful combination of incredulity and disdain, “the lifestyle editor?”
“A job I accepted under duress,” Tim explained, an edge of nervousness in his voice. Ellison liked that. “When you have a family, when you have mouths to feed, you make compromises. I cut my teeth on cops and courts,” he said. Ellison was also pleased to note that his hair was no longer swept upward in that ridiculous rooster’s comb, but was parted on the right side. “It feels safe to care for the first time in a long time. I mean to say,” he rephrased in a slightly manlier fashion and, Ellison noted, a deeper voice, “maybe a newshound can work at the Daily Herald with a little pride again.”
“That is the plan,” Ellison said. He sucked a seed from between his teeth.
“I notice,” Suskind ventured, having gained sufficient confidence to broach what must have been his real reason for worming his way into Ellison’s office, “Jimmy isn’t writing much.” Ellison did not answer. He tore another big mouthful from his sandwich and looked through the window from his office out into the newsroom. It was early, but the office had twice the activity of a normal day at deadline time. Ringing phones overlapped, keyboards tapped, and stories wrapped. No one strolled or lagged. Clusters formed under television sets—to watch the rolling tanks and armored personnel carriers—instead of at the coffee machines. Only Jimmy Stephens seemed incapable of rising to the occasion.
“Stephens,” Ellison said with genuine distaste, “isn’t doing much of anything that I can tell.”
“Jimmy’s talented, but he’s a little unfocused,” Tim said. “And he doesn’t really respond to the usual kinds of prodding. It makes him petulant. He needs stroking.”
“Think you can get anything out of him?” Ellison asked, wondering if Suskind was really a newsman languishing in entertainment or a simple opportunist.
“Maybe not,” Tim answered, to Ellison’s surprise. He expected Tim to promise him the stars if he asked for them. “It’s a very different situation. It’s a war.”
“Would you try if I told you to?” It did not matter what Suskind’s motives were, he decided. Ellison desperately needed stories coaxed out of his hapless embed. He tried to seem strong, commanding, intimidating even, but his mission was in jeopardy. To turn the Daily Herald into a competitive newspaper required a launch pad, a big success to draw attention to the paper’s new direction. James E. Stephens’s war coverage was supposed to provide that boost. Without him their war reporting limped along. It emboldened the naysayers. Jealous editors, the ones who had been passed over for him, the outside candidate, tested Ellison’s authority. He needed more out of Jimmy.
“I have a lot of work to do,” Tim said. “The weekend section may be trashy, but it takes a lot of time to put out.” He played hard to get like a woman, Ellison thought.
“Right. I’d really have to detail you to the war team as an editor to reapportion that workload, wouldn’t I?” Ellison asked, leaning over the crinkled white sandwich paper, crumbs, and slivers of iceberg lettuce.
“You’re the boss,” Tim said cheerfully. “I’d have no choice but to say yes. Let me clean this up,” Tim continued, bundling the sandwich wrappings carefully so neither seed nor crumb escaped. “I’ll take care of this mess for you.”
“I see that you will,” Ellison said with some satisfaction. “I see you will.”