Carl Hiaasen – Basket Case

Emma stiffens in her seat. “There’s been rumors that somebody outside the family is trying to get control of the chain.”

“Bingo.”

“Who?”

“A couple of foreign outfits. Polk says Maggad is pissing razor blades.”

“So what’s the old man want from you?”

“Besides a Page One obit that makes him sound like a cross between Ben Bradlee and St. Francis of Assisi, nothing much,” I lie smoothly. “Not a damn thing, really.”

“We’re being used,” she says dispiritedly.

“Me more than you, Emma.”

“It’s basically just two rich guys screwing with each other.”

“Basically, yeah,” I say.

A gloom settles upon Emma, affecting her normally flawless posture. She understands she’s caught up in a squalid little mess that has nothing to do with the practice of honest journalism. The fact I play a crucial role in resolving the situation only deepens her dismay.

“They don’t warn you about this stuff in college,” she says.

“Who’d believe it, anyway?”

“Right. Not me.” Emma stares emptily at her salad.

“On the bright side,” I say, “it might be another five years before Old Man Polk finally kicks the bucket. Both of us could be long gone by then.”

She raises her eyes. “What?”

“To bigger and better things.” A necessary elaboration.

“But in the meantime, you’ll have his obit finished and in the can. Please, Jack?”

“Okay. You win.”

Damn, I can’t help it. I feel sorry for the woman.

We eat in affable silence. Afterwards we order coffee and Emma calls for the check; lunch is on the newspaper. She asks about the Jimmy Stoma story, and I tell her it’s tough sledding though I’m making progress. I know better than to mention my scuffle with Jimmy’s keyboard player, but I can’t pass up the chance to recount the widow’s balcony blow job.

Emma lights up. “So you were right—she killed her husband!”

“Very possible. But I still don’t have enough to say so.”

“Oh, come on. Obviously she had a motive.”

“No, Emma, she had a cock in her mouth. That’s not necessarily the same thing. Cleo isn’t the type to murder for love; Cleo has a career to manage.”

A peppermint candy has glommed to one of my dental crowns, impeding speech. Observing my not-so-suave attempts to dislodge it, Emma stifles a laugh.

I hear myself saying, “This is no good. We can’t possibly be friends.”

“You’re right.”

“The planks of this relationship are animus, mistrust and a mutual lack of respect.”

“As it should be,” Emma says playfully.

Enough of this, I’m thinking.

“How many Valiums have you gobbled today?” I ask.

She is floored.

“You took one before you came to lunch, right?”

“No… yeah, I had to,” Emma stammers. “How’d you know?”

I reach across the table and grasp one of her hands. It’s impossible to say which of us is more startled.

“You listen,” I tell her, “I’m not worth it, and the job’s not worth it. We get back to the office, you go straight to the ladies’ room and flush mummy’s little helpers down the toilet. A drug situation is unacceptable.”

“You don’t understand, Jack. You can’t possibly.”

“Take off your shoes. That’s an order.”

“I will not.”

“Emma, I’m counting to three.”

“Are you nuts?”

Next thing I know, I’m kneeling under the table and in each hand is one of Emma’s taupe pumps. Her bare feet are drawn protectively under her chair, toes curling, but I can see how she’s repainted the nails: miniature black-and-white checkerboards!

I pop out grinning from beneath the tablecloth.

“You’re going to be fine!” I exclaim.

And Emma slugs me ferociously in the nose.

Emma asked me to steer clear of the newsroom until the bleeding stopped and the swelling went down. So now I’m at home, avoiding the mirror and noodling on my laptop. I see by the pop-up calendar that I’ve got eight days in which to avoid dying like Oscar Wilde, penniless and scandalized at age forty-six. Someday I must thank Anne for the warning. My forty-seventh birthday is a week from tomorrow. I have $514 in the bank and a nose the size of an eggplant.

My mother will phone on my birthday, but she’ll keep it short. She is fed up with being interrogated about my father, but I can’t stop thinking about what she sprung on me the last time—that she’d learned of his death “a long time ago” from a newspaper obituary.