Cora Rittenhouse answered the phone like I’d roused her from a deep sleep. “Rewrite,” she droned. I pictured Cora at her News-Times desk—one hand in the bag of microwave popcorn, one hand on the keyboard and both eyes on the muted TV. One spongy brain on permanent vacation.
“Hi, it’s me, Bubbles,” I said with enough energy to be contagious. “I’ve got two stories for you. A six inch and a twenty-five.”
“Ugh. You correspondents. So verbose,” Cora said. “Give me the twenty-fiver first. Slug?”
The slug was what appeared in the night editor’s computerized directory to identify a story. Had Mr. Salvo given me permission to write what I wanted, it would have been slugged something like McMullen.doc or coal.doc. Instead I slugged it—
“PMS.” That should slip the attention of the average male editor.
“Huh?” Cora’s fingers were tapping away on the other end. “You writing for the women’s pages now?”
“Hmmm. Not quite. Ready?”
“Guess so.”
I slowly and carefully read my story about how Stinky had been fired after persistently urging McMullen Coal to draw its maps correctly and how Hugh McMullen had then publicly painted him as a lunatic the day after a state inspector visited the Number Nine mine at Stinky’s urging. It was good. At the last minute I’d managed to contact a United Mine Workers spokesman who provided a scathing quote about McMullen Coal Inc. being comfortable with putting miners’ lives at risk just to avoid the tedium of regulation.
“Doesn’t sound like it has much to do with PMS to me,” Cora said when I was done.
“You ever meet an angry coal mining union boss?”
“See what you mean. What’s the next story?”
The next story was the wimpy personal account of being trapped in the mine explosion. It was slugged coalmine.doc. As I read it over to Cora, Mama was in the next room shouting out incorrect answers to Jeopardy!—her “intellectual” moment of the day.
“What is toilet tissue?” screamed Mama, as though Alec Trebek could hear her.
“I’m sorry,” Alec said. “The correct answer is, What is the capital of Tunisia?”
“Damn. Close, though.”
Cora finished and I said good-bye and thanks. She asked if I wanted to speak to Mr. Salvo, but I said I needed to get my mother and her friend down to the Pocono Passion Peak Resort by their bedtime.
“Whatever flips their switch,” she said. “Not my bag, but if that’s what your mother and her friend are into, it’s cool.”
I hung up and turned to find Mama slipping into her black leather jacket. “I sure hope they got a decent bath at the Passion Peak,” she said. “My bunions need a good soak after being in these boots all day.”
Genevieve was right behind her, reloading the peashooter with refreshed Sominex darts.
“You’re not bringing that, are you?” I said.
“Civilians,” she snorted. “Always convinced they’re out of range.” She tucked the peashooter in her purse and pulled out a quarter. “Hey, I can use this in the auto massage at the Passion Peak. My back sure is sore after dragging your Stiletto around.”
It was going to be a long, long night.
The first thing I did upon arriving at our scarlet suite at the Passion Peak was to put in a call to Jane. No luck. Since an inexplicable twist of genetics had rendered it impossible for me to comprehend how to check my messages on the answering machine remotely, I couldn’t tell if she had left one.
I called Dan and Wendy, too, but they were out. I’d forgotten. Thursday night was their weekly marriage encounter session, which, as far as I could determine, required Dan to apologize to Wendy for forty-five minutes straight. Fine by me.
Still, I was worried about my daughter. It was not like her not to call. Jane’s hair may be multicolored, her clothes tattered and grungy, but she was the most upfront, smart and loving kid around. She had never fallen into that snotty teenage girl routine. Personally, I had my doubts about whether most girls did—contrary to what TV would have you believe.
“Now what kind of bathtub is this, Genny?” Mama said, surveying the human-size champagne glass Jacuzzi. “How am I supposed to get in that?”
“Ladder.” Genevieve lay on the bed, her mounded belly jiggling like a Jell-O centerpiece. “I could get used to this. It’s orthopedic.”
“Ortho-obscene is more like it.” Mama cocked her chin at me. “This what Stiletto and you do in your spare time, Bubbles?”
We should be so lucky. I tried home again with no luck. “Where’s Jane? I haven’t spoken to her since jail.”
“Wonder how many mothers get to say that?” Mama asked, stripping off her black leather and turning on the tub. “Well, here goes nothing.”
Three hours later, Mama and Genevieve were sacked out on the red bed, while I, fully dressed, tossed and turned on the couch, constantly checking the digital clock and trying not to fall asleep. At eleven-fifteen I snuck out of the room and ran downstairs to the pay phone where I put in a toll-free call to the News-Times night desk.
“Griffin,” answered Bob Griffin, the assistant night editor.
“Hi, this is Bubbles. Is Mr. Salvo there still?”
“Just left. But he edited your story. It’s fine.”
I paused for effect. “Story? Don’t you mean stories? I filed two. A personal account of being trapped in the mine and a twenty-five inch piece on violations against McMullen Coal.”
“Two? We don’t even have space for twenty-five inches. Yours is supposed to run as a sidebar to the AP piece.”
“I don’t think so. It’s supposed to run in place of the AP piece. Check the directory. I called it in around seven-thirty.”
I waited nervously while Griffin checked the directory. “All that’s here that’s not edited is something slugged PMS. Careless Cora must have sent it to the wrong cue. I’ll bounce it over to lifestyle.”
“Why don’t you open it just to make sure?” I tried to sound efficient.
Griffin opened it and read. “Yup. Guess that looks like your story. Geesh. That Cora. I’m gonna go over and ream her out. This is inexcusable.”
“Don’t do that, Bob. She probably has PMS and it was on her mind. Unless, of course, you’d like to listen to her cry about cramps and bloating and—”
“No, no, no. That’s okay,” he said quickly. “So, back to this story. Salvo wanted to run it in place of the AP, you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
He sighed. “Okay. Christ I wish he’d drop poker night. I’m all alone here. You know, one of these Thursdays something bad is gonna happen, some story’s gonna get past me that’s not supposed to, and I’m gonna get the flak.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Tonight is not one of those nights. Trust me. This story is supposed to be in tomorrow’s paper.”
As I predicted, the phone began ringing shortly after 7 A.M. I lay on the foldout and let it, wagering mentally on who was calling. Mr. Salvo? Dix Notch? Stiletto? Unlikely since he had been up until all hours, probably, partying with Esmeralda Greene. Or maybe—
I snatched up the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, Mom. Guess what?”
Jane.
“Where were you last night?” I said. “I called and called and there was no answer.”
“Oh, it was sooo cool. You know Professor Tallow who’s teaching my Local Celtic History course at Lehigh? The one who’s leading the dig we’ve been working on?”
No. But that was okay. Jane didn’t wait for my answer.
“He wore this head-to-toe shroud like a real Druid and led a midnight moonlight vigil around the rocks we found in the woods. It was awesome.”
“Rocks?”
“Yeah. They’re ancient Celtic. Baal and all that.”
I didn’t know what to say. It sounded Star Trek-ese.
“Like Stonehenge,” Jane added.
“Oh.”
“Anyway, I just wanted to ask if I can go back to the dig this morning. I have a couple of classes at Liberty High, gym and Latin, but I’m already through the Ovid due for next month, so is it okay if I miss them?”
Jane was most likely the only senior at Liberty who asked her mother if it was okay to skip school—and not to head over to the Delaware Water Gap or smoke pot behind the Hill to Hill, either.
“Fine by me. Anybody call this morning about my story?”
“That’s how come I woke up so early. Salvo and that moron Notch called around five. Notch was bitching so loud I couldn’t even make out what he was saying, so you must have done something right.”
I rubbed my forehead. God, I hoped the risk I took was worth it. I’d never live with myself if Griffin, Cora and Salvo lost their jobs over this.
“There was one guy who phoned to say he really liked it, though.”
“There was?” I sat up straight.
“Yeah, although he said you missed a really crucial point.”
I despise nitpickers. “What crucial point?”
“I don’t know. He said he’s gonna stop by later this morning to explain it to you. But he doesn’t want you to tell cousin Roxanne that, since he’s in hiding.”
I rolled off the couch. “Ohmigod. Stinky.”