6

For some reason crazy people and derelicts tended to spend working hours on the steps into the building, and Paul, for some reason, always said good morning to them. He had even become familiar with a savage-looking man with huge yellow teeth who nodded not his head but his entire upper body in greeting and said, “How you doin’,” in response.

Paul never knew whether or not this was a question that required an answer, but on this morning he responded, “Very well, thanks,” and the man shrank back into the shelter of the eaves, beside the newspaper vending machine chained to a pole.

Paul shook himself out of his rain coat, but did not bother to hang it anywhere. “Gotta see the Ham,” he told the secretary he had never seen before.

“Yeah, Paul,” said Hamilton, mussing up his gray hair as a way of greeting.

Paul stood still in the center of the room, meaning that he would take more than three seconds, and that he needed to sit somewhere.

“Move some of that shit,” Hamilton said, waving a hand. A cigarette scribbled smoke into the air. “Berkeley High is having a field trip upstairs, and we all had to loan chairs.”

Paul dropped three phone books to the floor, and set a clipboard of blank yellow paper carefully on top of them. He sat, and said quickly, as he had planned for hours, “I need some time off.”

Ham put his feet up and scrunched his features with one hand. His face momentarily assumed new creases, then fell back into its usual folds. He blinked to focus his eyes, and leaned forward on his elbows. This was all a way of demanding an explanation.

Paul kept his silence.

Ham cleared his throat. “Time off.”

People on the Gazette liked to quote small portions of previous statements as a way of negating them. It was a habit Paul found delightful, except when it was used against him. “Off,” Paul said.

“Why?”

“Family emergency.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. What the hell’s a family emergency? And while you’re thinking, get up and shut the door, because I don’t want to embarrass you before the secretary.”

“Secretary? You mean your latest hobby horse out there?” Paul shut the door, but slowly.

“Do you have a review for us?”

Paul pressed his heart, and paper crackled.

“You’ve been borderline late three weeks running.”

“Borderline, though, right?”

“Don’t give me any of your horseshit, Paul, because I’m tired, the paper is broke, and you are very lucky to have a job. It’s the easiest newspaper job in the state. You file nine little inches, twenty-three centimeters, a week, and clip out some recipes you steal from Family Circle every Saturday, and that’s it.”

“It’s destroying my personality,” Paul said calmly.

“Personality.”

Paul let his features assume the expression of a Buddha.

“I could name a hundred people who would kill to have your job.”

Paul shrugged so hugely his neck creaked. “This is all beside the point. There is an emergency in my family.”

Ham studied Paul’s right eyelid. “What?”

“My cousin has disappeared.” As soon as he spoke, he knew it was a mistake. His first, but he could not afford many.

“Your cousin,” Ham said slowly.

That had been the weak part. The disappeared part had been solid. “He has vanished.”

“Life is hard.”

“So I may skip a column or two.”

“Write them ahead.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m sick of it. I’m sick of eating béarnaise and snails and that incredible style of food where they put a piece of lox next to a pickled brussels sprout and call it a salad.”

“You’ve never eaten béarnaise and snails.”

“I didn’t mean together.”

“You’re lazy,” said Ham, squashing out his cigarette.

Paul rolled his eyes, but he knew he was winning. Ham was already pinching another filterless out of the pack, and leaning back in the chair. A lecture was about to begin, and a lecture was the tax paid on a liberty.

“Lazy,” Ham continued. “I make you a celebrity. And what are you? Not even thirty. When I picked you, you couldn’t tell a bagel from a—one of those little inner tubes people who have had hemorrhoid operations sit on.”

The image made both of them thoughtful.

Paul was thirty-two, a fact which seemed like something that could be used against Ham in some way. He could not think of a way. He tugged the review from his jacket. He offered it to Ham.

“New Sicily.” Ham glanced at Paul and looked back at the review. “What is it with you and Italian food. You don’t like Chinese?”

“Sure,” Paul said, feeling that it would have been better to say nothing. Ham was going to destroy this review, tear it up, and say that Paul had to have another review in half an hour. Paul would threaten to quit. Ham would tell him to leave. When they met again, they would be calm.

It was true that Paul had become something of a celebrity. A year before the newspaper had run ads featuring Paul’s smiling face. The campaign flattered Paul, in a mild way, until he began seeing his face on the sides of AC Transit buses everytime he went for a walk. He had become reluctant to be on the same street as a bus.

The trouble with Ham was that Paul actually liked him. He had all the charm of a very old and very fierce reptile, but Paul admired him. Ham knew what he was doing. He was intelligent, and he believed in doing a job well.

Ham’s scowl was still in place, but there was the slightest twinkle in his eye.

“You younger guys. You expect a lot of things from life that isn’t going to happen. You draw cartoons for a few years, and you figure—I’m pooped. I need a break. You have a prize job, a job I would personally bleed for, and you piss and moan like you were covering the Donner party. Where is your desire to work? Where’s your hunger to work, until you can’t see straight, and to keep on going, because you have this need to keep going, this need to make something of yourself? To prove something.”

Ham smoked, reading the review. “I was sportswriter here for years. I won’t tell you horror stories about living on coffee and Camels for weeks at a time. Sometimes, it was fun. Sometimes working at the city dump is fun. I sat at ringside dozens of times. And got sprinkled with blood. My cuffs stained with it.”

He tossed the review to Paul’s side of the desk. “It’s a good review. Take it to Luke.”

It was a dismissal, and Paul had succeeded. He felt triumphant, but did not feel like celebrating. He handed the review to Luke Hand, the features editor, without speaking. Luke lifted an eyebrow to say that he saw it, leave it there.

Ham passed him, and paused at the men’s room door. “Take care of yourself,” he called after Paul, the sort of casual farewell Paul had heard uttered a thousand times.

Except this time he kept repeating it, all the way down the steps.

Take care of yourself.