Page 61 of We Could Be So Good
He doesn’t think that he wants to work for theJournal-American. What he wants is to keep working at theChronicle, with his desk facing Andy’s forever. But that’s already impossible, with Andy upstairs and his old desk empty and uncluttered for the first time in a year, not so much as a gum wrapper in sight. Nick can hardly look at the thing.
He’s never liked the idea of Andy being his boss. There’s already a chasm between them, a pit filled with class and money and connections. Nick didn’t like it even when they were ordinary friends; now that they’re something else he really doesn’t like it. He wouldn’t want to be sleeping with someone much richer than he was; he really doesn’t want to be sleeping with his boss.
Even entertaining the thought feels disloyal to Andy, but hedoesn’t think he’s out of line in feeling the way he does. He’s allowed to have his pride.
But there’s something more, some small voice of reason that urges Nick toward self-preservation. There’s going to be a time when Nick will want some distance from Andy. When this new thing between them comes to an end, he isn’t going to want to run into Andy in the elevator. He sure as shit isn’t going to want Andy’s signature on his paycheck.
“We were thinking,” says Hollenbeck, “that you might like a column. Maybe a bit more freedom to choose which stories you want to cover.” And then he mentions a number that Nick at first thinks must be a mistake, a solid twenty percent higher than what he’s making at theChronicle.
Nick knows that the only reason other papers might want him is because they want to handicap theChronicleby removing anything that might be a market advantage. Nick isn’tthatgood.
There’s no harm in hearing the man out, though. It’s good to know what kind of opportunities are out there.
“Yes,” Nick says. “I’d like that.”
***
First thing Friday morning there’s another fire in Gowanus. Jorgensen sends Nick to the crime scene. Ed Meyer has been covering this string of arsons, but he’s stuck on Staten Island for some godforsaken reason and won’t get to Brooklyn until noon, so Nick’s on deck.
On his way out, he makes a detour to the seventh floor to let Andy know that he won’t be around for lunch.
“I’ll come along,” says Andy, looking like Nick’s bailed himout of jail. He springs out from behind his enormous new desk in his enormous new office.
Nick raises an eyebrow. Andy isn’t even pretending not to hate his new job.
“Shut up,” Andy mutters. “And put that eyebrow away.”
It’s raining when they get downstairs. The past few days were sunny and about as warm as April can get in New York, so this weather feels like a slap in the face, a lesson that nobody should get too comfortable.
Andy opens his umbrella and sighs. “I’m betting that if I suggest a cab, you’re going to laugh in my face.”
“No cabs in weather like this. Besides, the subway will get us there twice as fast.” Nick turns up the collar of his coat and makes for the subway entrance.
The subway station is wet and muggy, with filthy-looking puddles littering the floor and drips coming from improbable places on the ceiling. It’s the sort of day when nobody even looks at one another. It feels like everyone’s mood is brittle, liable to snap at the slightest provocation.
When the train arrives, the car is half empty, so they keep a seat’s worth of space between them. That empty eighteen inches of rattan is taunting Nick, as bad as the suddenly shitty weather or everyone’s shitty mood or the shitty arsonist. Nickhatesthat empty seat. It feels unnatural to go from touching someone constantly every evening to acting like touching that person is the furthest thing from his mind.
Every night that week, they’ve fooled around—kissing, hands over the clothes, orgasms tacitly off the table. Nick has never done anything like it; he’s never been with anyone without getting off being the mutual and immediate goal. But Andy seems to havedone plenty of it. He has this way of slowing down once things get too heated: he pulls back a few inches, puts his hands someplace respectable, makes his kisses shallow and soft, so that by the time they separate Nick isn’t even too frustrated.
After all that, they go to sleep in their separate beds. When they wake up, they go through their regular morning routine, except with approximately five thousand percent more touching: a hand on the other’s back when passing in the bathroom, a kiss on the crown of the head when handing over a cup of coffee. Mostly chaste, sweet touches that Nick wants to hold in his hands and store someplace safe.
And then they leave the apartment and turn all that off like a switch. Which is fine. Everybody does that. Nobody gropes one another on the street. Except Nick feels too aware of Andy’s presence a few feet away. It’s all he can think about; he doesn’t dare turn his head because he’s afraid that everyone on the train will know exactly what he’s thinking. He’s more careful about preserving space between them and keeping his hands to himself than he’d even be with a stranger.
The address Jorgensen gave them is just over the river, close enough to the subway station that they don’t even get soaked, at least not too badly. The fire’s out by the time they get there. A fire engine is blocking the street, along with a handful of police cars. A river of dirty brown water flows down the street, carrying ash and debris and a nameless sludge. And the house—it’s in one piece, at least. Probably it’ll be condemned. If it’s the same arsonist as the other fires, the stairwell will have been soaked in gasoline. Not much you can do with a building after that, other than tear it down.
Nick’s been at this long enough that the faces of the peopleoutside shouldn’t startle him. Some of them have coats and hats. But—a girl in her pajamas. A boy holding a squirming dog. A pair of old women in housecoats and curlers.
Who the fuck burns a building down? Logically, Nick knows the answer: nine times out of ten, the arsonist is a landlord looking to get some insurance money. But the last few fires in this neighborhood don’t fit that profile—the buildings were good investments and the landlords are pissed to be out a source of income. Sometimes kids torch an empty building—it’s stupid and dangerous, but that’s kids for you—but these buildings have all been inhabited and in busy neighborhoods. So: a firebug.
The residents don’t want to talk to Nick, no surprise there. Nick would probably punch anyone in the face who tried to bother him if he were in their shoes. The firemen, smoke-smeared and waterlogged, keep their mouths shut. The fire captain and police will give a press briefing later on; that’s standard.
Nick jots down what he sees, hanging around the smoldering mess with a clutch of other reporters. The rain picks up, and Andy adjusts his umbrella so that it covers about two-thirds of each of them, leaving just enough exposed that they’ll both be a soggy mess by the time this is done.
He’s been at this long enough that he recognizes a few of the reporters. That’s Louise Ramirez from theDaily Newsin the rumpled trench coat—she was doing rewrites at theEaglewhen he was a copyboy. And in the sharp hat, that’s Len Brewer from theAmsterdam News. He doesn’t recognize the man with the haircut like Andy’s but would put money on his being somebody from theTribune. Nick mimes tipping his nonexistent hat at Jim and when he catches Louise’s eye, she mimes drinking. He nods—they’re due for a catch-up.
Andy already has his notebook out and is jotting somethingdown. A year shouldn’t be enough to make someone a competent reporter, but Andy can hold his own. As publisher, he won’t alienate his reporters. For the first time, it occurs to Nick that he might not be one of the people who work for Andy, that he might be watching it all happen from a distance.
He drags his attention back to the crowd of bedraggled people huddled under too few umbrellas on the sidewalk. Maybe he’ll offer to buy lunch for that pair of old women, slip them his business card if they feel like talking later on. He’s glad he doesn’t usually report on fires; they’re bad enough when they’re in empty warehouses. The smell of smoke and—yep, that’s gasoline—is thick in the air.
