The Transcriptionist, page 15
“Aww,” he says, “I’m talking to my man in the pen. Can’t you call?”
“No, I can’t call.”
“Well, why fucking not?”
“Because I don’t have a fucking cell phone.”
“What, you lose it?”
“No, I don’t have one.”
“Mad shit!” He lifts his arms in the air, then doubles over in disbelief. “This girl ain’t fucking got no fucking cell phone.”
“Hey,” she shouts, “someone’s dying before your eyes! Fucking call nine fucking one one!”
The guy bends at the waist, and when his sneakered foot slips off the curb, he quickly yanks it back. “Well, fuck,” he says, “all you had to do was fucking say so.” He grips the phone and glares at Lena. “Yo, man, I got to go. This lady here ain’t got no fucking phone, so I got to call nine one one.” She watches as he pulls the phone away from his ear and dramatically presses the button to end the call. He presses three buttons and turns away. “Forty-Third and Broadway,” he is saying into the phone.
The cyclist suddenly sits up and removes his helmet. Lena touches his arm. “Are you sure you should do that? An ambulance will be here soon.”
He rubs his sweaty curls. “I’m OK,” he says. He starts to stand.
“But how . . . wait, you were . . . why don’t you sit down on the curb?”
He brushes himself off and leans over, hands on knees. “My bike,” he says, picking it up and feeling it like a doctor feeling for fractures. “My bike,” he says again. “I think my bike is fine. Unbelievable.” He straightens and smiles. “I really think I’m OK.”
“Hold on—why don’t you wait for the ambulance? I’ll wait with you. You could have a concussion or something. And the cab driver . . .” She turns, but the driver is already in his cab and, in a show of newfound timidity, has his turn signal on and is attempting to merge back into traffic. He waves to them and squeezes the taxi into the moving lane of cars.
The cyclist throws his leg over the bike. “Thanks,” he says, and then he is gone.
Lena thinks she may have to sit down on the curb to recover from this Times Square miracle, but the ambulance arrives and she has to explain to two tired medics why she is the only person left at the scene of an accident.
She tries to say something as the medics turn away, but no words will come. She opens her mouth and says in a voice she doesn’t recognize, “He almost died. Right here, in the middle of Times Square, in the middle of all these people, right in front of us.
“Do something!” she yells. No one has heard; the ambulance doors close, the siren goes silent, and the van pulls away.
She stands on the sidewalk and looks at the street where the cyclist had been. Life had changed in an instant and then changed back again. Cars drive on, and some of the tires must be circling over the exact spot where just moments earlier a man lay dying and then not dying. She looks at the people pushing past, at the tickertape flowing above their heads, and above that, at the giant models looking down on them from the safety of their flat-screen boxes, mirrors to the impossible, taunting the tourists with the world of manufactured beauty.
Staring at the empty accident scene, Lena again sees the cyclist, his beautiful body lying still in the street, his lithe legs, his torso like Apollo’s, lit from within.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Are We Kings or Are We Dogs?
In the morning, she buys a paper at the neighborhood coffee shop, where the Italian men continue to sit under the green awning discussing the merits of being born wealthy or handsome.
Katheryn’s article is on A1: IRAQI DEFECTOR CLAIMS KNOWLEDGE OF BIOWEAPONS BUNKERS. It is almost exactly as Katheryn dictated on the tape that Lena has in her pocket. She is sure she will be fired, but she has to face it, so she walks to work as usual.
The security guards either have not been alerted or do not associate her physical modesty with the rogue worker they have been told to watch for, so they smile as she swipes her card and enters the elevator bank.
In the Recording Room, she presses the flashing light on the overnight machine, and Katheryn’s unmistakable voice screams, “I will have you fired! This is your last day at the Record. You will never be affiliated with this institution again!”
Lena laughs at the last line. “It’s a country of bureaucrats,” she says as she erases Katheryn’s voice from the machine.
“Yo,” Lance says from the open doorway.
“Yo.”
“I wondered if you had that transcript yet.”
“I called the desk last night but they said you had already left. The tape was completely blank, Lance, completely clean. There was nothing on it.”
“For real?”
“For real. I’m sorry. Did you have it near something magnetic?”
“Oh, shit, I don’t think so.”
“I hope you have good notes.”
“Oh, fuck. Who takes notes anymore? Can I at least get the tape back?”
“I put it in interoffice mail. Since it was blank, I figured—”
“I better go down to the mailroom. We still have a mailroom, right?”
“On the sixth floor.”
“Thanks.”
After Lance leaves, she turns off her computer and, using the office phone, dials the recording line. There are three rings; then the overnight machine picks up with a click, and the sound of her own voice fills the room: “You have reached the Recording Room’s dictation mailbox. Please note that this voice mailbox has a maximum duration of twenty minutes . . .”
She erases this message and records a new one: “You have reached the Record’s Recording Room. This is the transcriptionist speaking. Please do not dictate your story. It will not be transcribed. The transcriptionist will transcribe no more. Do you hear me? I hope so, because I’ve heard you. I’ve listened for four years, through news—breaking, boring, and mundane. And this is what I’ve learned: that silence has two sounds, one high, one low, the sound of the central nervous system and the hum of blood circulating. Listen for it now. Listen for the lower frequencies.”
Looking around the room as though for the first time, she views it with some distance, some degree of objective scrutiny. The room is small, shabby, familiar; she will not feel any sadness at leaving it. There is only one question, one asked by many when returning to the town where they are born: Why did it take me so long to leave?
There is a soft knock on the door.
“Come in.”
It’s one of the security guards she has been nodding hello and good-bye to for four years. She remembers when his wife died two years ago because one night in the lobby he showed her a forty-year-old picture of the two of them at Brighton Beach.
“Tommy.”
He is tall and ruddy, Irish, a retired cop. They both blush.
“Lena?”
“Yes.”
“I have to”—he looks down and clasps his hands in embarrassment—“I have to escort you to Howard’s office.”
“Sure. I understand.”
“And he said to bring the tape.”
“What tape?”
“He said you would know. He says it’s urgent.”
They take the elevator to the silent fourteenth floor. It is the only carpeted floor in the building; the beige material muffles footsteps completely, and she is reminded of how prison guards used to cover their shoes with socks to silence footsteps in the solitary confinement ward.
When Lena enters, the young woman at the reception desk in the outer office glances up and gives her a look of stern reproach, which she perfected during her year abroad at Oxford. Lena busies herself looking around the room. It is boring except for a bookshelf full of books by Record writers. On the modern glass coffee table is a carefully arranged yo-yo collection.
“You can go in now.”
Tommy hesitates at the receptionist’s silent stare. “I’ll go now. Good luck to you, Lena.”
“Thanks, Tommy.”
She approaches Howard’s office door, which is half-closed, and looks in. He sits in his ergonomically advanced chair with his back to the door and does not immediately turn even though she clears her throat when she enters.
“Trust in the Record is everything. It is the paper of record,” he says, spinning around. He is a bit short for such a high-backed chair, but he is not wearing critter suspenders; he has a pleasant, youthful, almost kind face. “People do trust it. And they should. And I—we—want them to. And you, Lena, have damaged that trust.”
His face is slightly pink, unthreatening. He motions for her to sit down. The bookshelf beside his desk displays books on management, the Middle East, and golf and, on the middle shelf, more yo-yos.
“I damaged the Record’s trust with readers, or the Record’s trust with the Pentagon?”
“Lena, I’m trying to do you a favor here. Katheryn Keel has been on the phone all morning, practically clawing through the line to get at you. Have you ever seen this woman angry?” he asks, patting his face. “I’m surprised my eyebrows weren’t singed off.”
Lena shields her eyes against the strong sunlight coming through the window behind him. Sky is all that can be seen at this height, stretches of sky and pieces of other, taller buildings.
“Now I need you to hand over the tape with Katheryn’s dictation. I don’t want to make this any more painful than it already is. A security guard will escort you to Human Resources, where they’ll go over your severance package.”
“I take responsibility for what I did. But you’ve got a foreign reporter who passes her copy to the Pentagon for approval, not to mention the issue of fraudulent datelines.”
“Lena, Katheryn Keel is a legendary reporter. Now I need that tape.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think that’s the most ethical action here.”
“Ethical action? I’m not sure you understand my position. This could be incredibly damaging for us. And as far as organizations go, we’re at the top of the heap, so to speak. And there are always those interested in knocking the king off the mountain.”
“Yes, the Record is definitely at the top of the heap.”
He tilts his head, suspicious. “What do you mean?”
“Just that it’s true. As my father used to say, no one kicks a dead dog.”
“Yes, Lena, this dog is very much at the top of the heap.”
“Some would argue that all newspapers are pretty dead dogs. But I assure you that I don’t kick dogs, living or dead.”
“One could say you have disgraced the king of the mountain. You—”
As he continues his surreal talk about disgraced kings and dead dogs, Lena examines his smooth, fair-skinned face. We sit here across from each other, she wants to say, and yet you have not read your own obit. But it has been written. Howard is expected to live many more years, but the advance obit is on file, as it is for many newsworthy people, just in case. It is well known that he is an adventure-seeking vacationer, and it would take only one false move with the telemark boots or a faulty parachute cord to land him on page 1 with that unmistakable headline including his age, which will never change once it has been set in 24-point Record New Roman font.
“—what kind do you think the Record would be, Lena?”
“I’m afraid I don’t get your meaning. What are you asking?”
“I said what kind do you think the Record would be, you know, standing at the top of the heap at the top of the mountain?”
She tries to grasp the conversational thread. He could mean which king does the Record represent, the king of the mountain. Or he could mean what kind of dog would be at the top of the heap.
“I’m sorry, Howard. Are you talking about—are we kings or are we dogs?”
“That, Lena,” he says, thumping his desk, “is the question of our time. Are we kings or are we dogs?”
“It is a question I often ponder myself.”
“I think, Lena, that as far as dogs go, the Record would be a cross between a Saint Bernard and—what was that Lassie dog?”
“A collie.”
“That’s it! The Record, the dog at the top of the heap, would be a kind of Lassie – Saint Bernard, saving the wayward and bounding home in victory.”
A sound from behind causes her to turn toward a figure in the doorway. She doesn’t recognize him at first; he stands very still and straight, with a regal, almost military bearing.
“Dad!” Howard shouts. “What are you doing here?”
“Hello, Son.”
“Kov?” Lena asks. “You’re Popcorn?”
“I never told you my full name, Lena. Kolvin Hirn.”
“Kolvin Hirn, the publisher of the Record?”
“Former publisher. My son is the publisher now.”
“Dad, what are you doing here?”
“Howard, you know I have not interfered since I retired.”
Howard has moved to the edge of his desk and is nervously catching and releasing one of the yo-yos.
“That’s true, Dad. And I appreciate it. But this just isn’t a good time. Let’s talk later.”
“It can’t wait. I’m here about Lena.”
She looks from Kov to Howard in shock. They look nothing alike, the son small but round faced in an overlarge suit, the father lean and angular in a button-down shirt, unwrinkled but worn, a distinct formality about him.
“Kov, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m sorry, Lena. It wasn’t intentional, not at first anyway. The day you found me in my hiding place, I didn’t want to blow my cover. Yes, it was dishonest, and I’m sorry for that, but I didn’t want to scare you away, to silence you.”
“How do you two know each other?” Howard asks, clenching the yo-yo in his fist. “And what do you mean, your ‘hiding place’?”
“I’ve been archiving the obituaries, the paper copies.”
“Dad, we talked about this. It’s unnecessary. You should be enjoying retirement. We decided.”
“You decided. I decided something different. I enjoy working with the obits—”
“But Dad, it’s not worthy of you. It’s not important.”
“Obits mark the lives that define us as a nation; they embody the moral imperative of the newspaper, one that is slipping away.”
“It’s a memento, Dad. It’s—”
“It is not a memento. It is memorialization. And Lena understands this; she literally serves as a connector within the paper. I will not allow you to fire her. I will not allow it.”
“You will not undermine me,” Howard says, his voice quivering. “I’m the publisher now. It is not your decision. She defied Katheryn Keel. We’ve got a story on A one that the Pentagon is denying and the White House . . . you don’t even want to know about the White House. I can have the board—”
“If you fire Lena, you have to fire Katheryn.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“By your own logic, they both violated the Record’s rules. I’ve expressed before my reservations about Katheryn’s reporting, her sources. But she agreed to have her work vetted by the Pentagon. That’s not—”
“Dad, Katheryn was cleared.”
“What do you mean, cleared? You knew the Pentagon was censoring—”
“It’s not censorship, Dad. It’s a different kind of war we’re in now. We have to adapt to the times.”
“We’re not fighting a war, Howard. We are running a newspaper.”
“We’re on the front lines.”
“That is nonsense. You sound like Ralph. Is that where this is coming from?”
“We got eight Pulitzers last year under Ralph!”
“You don’t buy Pulitzers with censorship!”
“Excuse me,” Lena says. “I’m sure you two have things to discuss in private. Kov, I really appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s not necessary. I want to leave the Record. I’m ready. I want to leave.”
They both stare at her, and for the first time she sees the father-son similarity in their expression of surprise. Howard must once have been under his father’s wing, acquiring the self-assurance and certainty that has allowed him to chart his own course.
Without another word, she crosses the room and holds out her hand to Howard, who, susceptible to political and even civilian instinct, shakes it.
She turns to leave. “Where are you going? I need that tape!” Howard shouts, but Kov steps in front of him, and Lena makes her escape. As she hurries down the hall, she does not feel nervous; she feels a lightness, a lightness so unfamiliar that she supposes it must be freedom, or almost freedom, or at least more freedom than she has felt in years.
She reaches the Recording Room unnoticed. It takes less than five minutes to pack her belongings—Merriam-Webster’s tenth edition, the Record style manual, the escape hood that still sits on top of the trash can—and less time to unpack them. She won’t take anything.
From her desk drawer, she removes a pair of green rubber gloves and pulls them on. When she holds her arms out to open the window, she stops and stares at her covered hands, which look oddly detached, dismembered, masked.
The pigeon is not alarmed when she raises the window and steps out beside him. The ledge is extended but it is not a full balcony. Balconette—the word finally comes to her. That’s what it’s called. Like a resistance fighter about to be caught, she unfolds the clipping about Arlene and tears it to pieces, the paper soft as breadcrumbs from heat and handling. She places the pieces on the ledge, where a hot breeze lifts the remains and releases them to the city below.
The pigeon is not fazed. He has probably seen more shocking things. There is no need to speak aloud, but Lena feels that she can speak silently to the pigeon and, through him, to Arlene, to her mother, to the city below, and in that way everything that needs to be understood will be.
“What does it look like through a bird’s eyes?” He stands sentry, facing the shabby hotel across the street. He does not look left toward Times Square, or right toward the Hudson. The city sounds are muted, the activity suspended, everything suspended.
“Is that the way to do it?” she asks out loud. “Straight ahead, no distraction from the periphery.” She looks toward the river. It is as if she is in a hot-air balloon, hovering over the city, drifting, observing. Looking down, she feels that she could never be one of the ones who has jumped, yet, at the same time, that she already has.
