Jessica leaned back, wiped the sweat from beneath the straps of her white tank top. Let her head loll back on sore hinges. She squinted up at the ceiling fan, blades barely able to slice through the oppressive soup.
She took a sip of tonic, ice cubes fading fast.
Her computer finally came to life, desktop filled with a Jessica at two years old, sitting on her mother’s lap. A set of genetically identical grins, mother’s long blond hair tickling baby Jessica’s tiny nose. Pudgy fingers reaching up to squeeze her mother’s flushed, chipmunk cheeks.
Jessica didn’t dwell on that old Kentucky home, the first of many, so long ago the only memories left were right there on the screen before her. Easily remedied by a few flicks of her thumb. She browsed the latest news. Opened a couple of tabs. Scrolled up and down. Her heart wasn’t in it, and went back to staring out the window.
Jessica sighed. “What a day.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Dinah concurred from the threshold, clad in her own tank top and gray boxer shorts. Bottle of red wine hanging from one hand, full glass in the other.
Jessica dropped her legs from the chair, pushed it back with her feet.
Dinah sat down across from her. Had a sip of wine. Picked up a pack of Camels from up off the windowsill. Lit one, let the smoke escape in a slow measured sigh.
“What’s happening in the real world, Jess?”
Jessica shrugged. “I’ll let you know soon as I find one.”
“Come on. Help a girl out.”
“Labor department report for May shows a loss of 345,000 jobs. Feds are opening an investigation into the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Warehouse fire in Mexico spread to a daycare center killing 27 children. And two more confirmed servicemen deaths in Afghanistan; ages twenty and twenty-one –”
“Any good news out there?”
“As far as the saying goes, that would involve no news.”
Dina tilted back in her chair, scooped a glass ashtray off one of the bookshelves, and placed it on the table. Put her cigarette to rest, let the smoke unwind.
“I hate to see people treat you like that, Jess.”
“Every school’s got a Jessica Kincaid. I just have the bad luck of being the one in mine.”
“Not just them. That dried up old bastard tonight. Mr. Table Thirteen.”
“There’s one every night, Blondie –”
“I just get tired of it,” Dinah snapped. “I get tired of being tired of it. I’m sick. I’m sick of the whispers. Sick of the bullies. The cheaters. The sneaks. Managers. Owners. Sick of the privileged. The predators. People with too much power over our lives. Over your life. There’s times it feels they can take everything away from us, just by opening their eyes on any given morning.” She shook her head, dialing it back. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there is no way to make them see. No way to change their nature. Maybe all that’s left is reckoning. All that’s left to do is whatever we can do that will make them bleed… Pure punishment for the shit they put people through, day to day.”
“Day to day,” Jessica said. “Key words. It’s day to day, every day.”
“I’m eighteen years older than you. I’ve had to put up with a hell of a lot more day to days than you.”
“I know.”
“Comes a point, comes a day…” Dinah took two swallows of wine, made that full glass good and half-empty. “Along comes the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
“What a weird fucking camel.”
“I’m serious.”
“And I’m doing all I can not to be.”
“That’s just it!” Dinah slammed her hand on the table. “This isn’t a joke. None of it is. And you shouldn’t have to treat it that way just to make it through another day!”
“I don’t have the luxury of alcohol any more. Jokes are pretty much all I’ve got at my disposal.”
“You got me, Jess.”
“And we’re both in the same boat,” Jessica replied coolly. “You’re my aunt. Not a weapon, not a bodyguard. And you’re not my mother.”
Dinah froze, cigarette inches from her mouth.
Jessica closed her eyes. Heart melting, collecting in a dark pool somewhere around her abdomen. Words already mixing with the smoke, reeking of cheap tobacco, too late to take back.
“Well…” Dinah picked up her glass, stared through the contours. “Guess after all these years, I just feel like I am, sometimes.”
A few blocks away, a police siren came to life.
Jessica didn’t find any comfort in the distraction. “I’m sorry, Blondie.”
“I miss her, too.”
“Look…” Jessica swept her laptop aside. “It’s been three years. And in that time, I’ve cleaned myself up, gotten straight A’s. I’ve put myself to work. This place, this apartment, is our place… and it’s about as close to a real home as I’ve ever known. I never had it this good back in Louisville. I’m sorry to talk about her that way. She was your sister, my mother, but… you hear that?”
“What?”
“That’s past tense.” Jessica reached over, and poured her aunt another glass. “She was your sister. She was my mother. She was the one who disappeared, vanished. She ain’t coming back. And at this point, I’ve got to say it: I’m as past it as I’m ever going to get. Moving on.”
Dinah glanced over at the laptop.
Jessica followed her eyes, caught sight of the desktop pic.
Baby Jessica and her mother, smiling forward through time.
Jessica drew the laptop close, opened her browser and did a quick search. Clicked around, left and right; set a new background and turned the screen towards her aunt.
Dinah coughed, laughter materializing in gray clouds of smoke. “That is a sexy octopus.”
“Smart fucking Cephalopod to boot. Kick a dog’s ass in a game of fetch any day.”
“Say what you will. You’re not much different from your mother.”
“Except I’m here. And so are you.”
Dinah slid from her seat and rounded the table. Reached down and wrapped her arms around Jessica. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I get tired of seeing what they do to you.”
“There’s a lot of they out there.” Jessica pulled back. “Too many for the two of us to do anything about.”
“Can we please end this on a good note?”
“There’s an octopus now.”
“Guess it’s up to me to change the world then,” Dinah concluded with a smile. “Goodnight, Jess.”
“Night, Blondie.”
Jessica watched her aunt saunter from the room on uneven feet, into the hallway. Footsteps making a kitchen pit stop, cleaning out her wine glass. Then to the bathroom. Flush of the toilet, after which the shuffle of her steps were punctuated with the closing of her bedroom door.
From out in the night, two gunshots rang out.
Jessica turned to the window, a little unnerved that the disturbance roused nothing more in her than casual curiosity. Like a hand-me-down sweater, it looked as though she was nearly done growing into the world left to her.
She brought the laptop closer. Guided the cursor to the control panel, and absently restored the picture of her mother back to the desktop.
Jessica rubbed her eyes.
“Big day tomorrow,” she whispered to the crickets and smoldering ashtray. “Big day.”
But Jessica wasn’t ready to call it a night. Ready for one last round with the browser.
The overhead fan continued to spin along the same tired groove, covering the same ground as always. And the overwhelming heat of another Verona summer continued to make fun, as Jessica typed in her search, held close in the embrace of cold quotation marks.
“KENDRA KINCAID”.
Disc two on the stereo finishing well before Jessica was done with her search.
Chapter 4: Something Big Out of Forrest Hills.
Jessica never bothered to set an alarm. For anythi
ng. Stuck with an internal clock that could lift her from the deepest sleep, sweetest dream. A curse for anyone wishing to enjoy a proper eight hours of shut-eye. A blessing, in as much as no human being in this modern world would ever be punished for under-sleeping.
On that Sunday morning, Jessica’s ears awoke a full minute ahead of her eyes, needled by the ceaseless whine of Dinah’s alarm clock.
Her eyes opened, face crammed against the back of a futon she rarely took pains to unfold; eyelashes batting against navy blue duck cloth. Jessica sat up. Hot shafts of yellow sunlight stretched along the floor in slender rectangles. A miniature desk nestled in the corner, alongside a honeycomb tapestry of stacked milk crates, stuffed with selected nonfiction and reference books. Atop a set of wooden filing cabinets sat piles of spiral ring notebooks.
The walls were free of decoration, save for two wooden frames. One containing the November 4th 2008 issue of The Economist; then Senator Barack Obama on the cover, midstride against a white background. Giant bolt letters beneath spelling out two simple words: IT’S TIME. Next to that, a photograph clipped from the local paper: fifteen or so pigs dotting the roof of a lengthy barn. Trapped by floodwaters that were minutes away from engulfing the building, leaving the whole lot of them to sink or swim.
And, of course, no alarm clock.
The nagging, triple-set beeps continued to bleed through the walls.
Jessica lifted herself from the futon. The wooden frame creaked with its accustomed good morning. She shuffled into the hallway on bare feet, placed her ear against Dinah’s door before rapping three times.
“Snooze is a button!” she called out. “Not a goddamn suggestion!”
Jessica thought she heard Dinah’s voice through the door.
She let herself into an empty room. Twin bed a mess of mismatched sheets and pillow cases. Small, aging television mounted on a black mini-fridge. A couple of posters pinned to the walls; De La Soul, The Pixies, Portished, Mary J. Blige, and the brooding eyes of Kurt Cobain.
Jessica silenced the alarm with a smack.
She was left with the unsettling presence of Dinah’s empty bedroom.
Outside, the taunting melody of an ice cream truck meandered past the open windows.
“Who the hell is buying Creamcicles at nine in the morning?”
She didn’t get an answer.
“Interesting.”
Jessica was venturing back into the hallway when the bathroom door burst open.
Dinah stepped out along with a cloud of steam, clad in a light blue towel.
Jessica immediately began to jump up and down, waving her hand below the smoke detector. “I was wondering where you were.”
“Didn’t hear the shower?”
“I could hear your alarm clock.”
Dinah swept damp curls of pine straw blond from her forehead. “Sorry…”
Jessica followed her into the bedroom.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Dinah said, darting into the closet. “Thought I’d take out the garbage. Goddamn trash bag busted open…” From behind the door, Dinah threw out her towel. “Busted open all over the place. All over me. Tried to shower the shit off, but I swear I can still smell it.”
“You’re fine.”
“What are you wearing?”
“White shirt. Black tie. Same as I always wear to work.”
“Unacceptable.” Dinah reappeared in jeans and a sports bra. From her fingers hung an Ann Taylor power suit. Black boot cut with matching jacket, hanging gracefully over a turquoise blouse. “I’m not having my niece show up on her first day dressed like Annie Lennox.”
Jessica’s mouth fell open with a ridiculous pop.
“OK, then… Jessica Kincaid: speechless.”
“I’m just wondering who the hell Annie Lennox is,” Jessica managed.
“I give you Ann Taylor and you give me shit about my age?”
Jessica threw her arms around her aunt and did a number on her ribcage.
“Hey! Hey, easy now!” Dinah pushed back, holding the dress at arm’s length. “You’ll wrinkle it.”
“You can’t afford this, Blondie.”
“It’s my duty as an American to stimulate the economy.”
“How conveniently patriotic.”
“It’s the only kind of patriotism left. Now go put this on, and let’s get you to the Observer.”
Jessica took the hanger and gave the dress another look. “Thank you.”
“Go. Train leaves in fifteen minutes.”
Jessica returned to her room with an uncharacteristic skip to her step.
The sun’s angle had steepened, dust dancing in the sunbeams as she threw on her new outfit.
Ready to get to work.
***
The Verona Observer’s main branch was located right off the highway, a ten-minute drive from home.
As Dinah’s mustang creaked up the driveway, Jessica was surprised to find the lot almost full. Like most local newspapers across the country, the Observer had undergone massive rollbacks. The once family-owned paper had been bought out by the Century Media Group in 1999, followed by a precipitous drop in sales and subscriptions. Considering that a good deal of rags had already folded under the twin guns of the Internet and a crippling recession, it was a miracle they were still standing.
“Go show ‘em how it’s done,” Dinah ordered, planting a kiss on her cheek.
“It’s just an internship.”
“You’re just an internship.”
“You clever, clever bitch…” Jessica opened the door with a rusty squeal. “I’ll call you later.”
She slammed the door shut and adjusted her jacket, still unaccustomed to its luxurious contours.
The lobby was small, unpretentious and comforting. A few cushioned chairs rested against walls displaying banner headlines from the more historic moments in the paper’s eighty-year run. It might have passed for a minimalist art gallery, but for the security guards eyeing her from their desk.
“Jessica Kincaid,” she informed them, squaring her shoulders. “I’m supposed to be meeting Al Holder?”
“All right, Miss…” The older of the pair, a thickset man with a brass nametag reading SCOTT, stood graciously and presented her with a clipboard. He reached for the phone, smiling through a carefully maintained beard going gray against dark-brown skin. “Just need you to sign in. Got the time right on that clock behind us.”
Two minutes later, the elevator doors slid open.
Al Holder didn’t talk fast and hard. Wasn’t one for suspenders, cigars, or any of the countless Hollywood stereotypes. He struck Jessica as a specific breed of middle-aged, recovering alcoholic. Focused and determined, yet colored with a certain degree of underlying panic. Bright blue eyes juggling a thousand different responsibilities. Hectic schedule exemplified in a suit long overdue for a date with the cleaners, the end of his belt missing that last loop, sticking out like a leather cowlick.
Immaculate mustache, though, Jessica couldn’t deny him that.
“Al Holder.” He extended his hand, two clammy shakes that Jessica did well not to wipe off on her new suit. “You’ve joined us on quite a day, Miss Kincaid.”
“Jessica’s fine.”
“That was my last chance to be polite, really, is all that was,” Al said, southern hospitality tempered with a terse motion for Jessica to follow him. “We’ve got something big coming out of Forrest Hills. While I would ordinarily take a bit more time to show you around, get you settled in, I’m afraid we’ve just got the ride to take care of all the traditional stuff.”
“OK.”
They stepped into the elevator. “I’m not going to put this delicately, Jessica. While this internship is a great opportunity for you to get a firsthand look at how a newspaper operates, don’t expect anything too spectacular.”
The doors closed, and they began their slow climb to the third floor. Jessica imagined that no amount of custodial work would ever remove the smell of stale
coffee from those steel confines.
“Don’t feel put down by what’s asked of you. Hell, even our grads get the honor of doing all our research for us. You, on the other hand, are a rising high school senior. It’s going to be a lot of fetching. I’m talking coffee, supplies, changing toner. You will feel used, you will probably experience no small amount of resentment... But, if you keep your eyes open, you will also learn a thing or two.”
The elevator began to slow, showing its age on approach.
“One last thing…” Al turned to her with guarded sincerity. “I know our paper ran several stories involving your sexual harassment complaint against Brookside High and Glen Roberts. If that’s going to be a problem, then you need to talk to me about that as soon as possible…” The doors slid open, and he held up a cautioning finger. “Just not right now.”
Jessica was happy to oblige.
Stepped lively into the hub of the Verona Observer.
Once again, her preconceptions were given the business. Phones ringing, but not off the hook. The chatter hummed along, soft enough to catch distinct conversations throughout. Cubicles in place of exposed desks, posters in place of Pulitzers. Large bay windows looked out onto the freeway rather than a jagged skyline of imperious buildings. It could have been any office, any business, in any town.
Regardless of scale, there was a vibrant energy that spread to every corner of the room; enough to throw Jessica’s compass off by a few degrees as she tried to keep pace with her tour guide. “There we got copyediting. Research. Got some TV’s mounted on the walls, tuned to media that pays a whole lot more than we do. What else…? Graphics, audio. Archives, one floor down… That right there is a supply closet.”
Jessica thought about pulling out the small notepad she’d brought along.
Mortified to discover she didn’t have a pen.
A woman wearing an outfit similar to Jessica’s merged flawlessly into traffic, keeping perfect pace with Al. “Got something off Reuters about Cash For Clunkers. Insufficient funds to cover their reimbursement requests.”
“Who filed Detroit on Friday?”
“Bobby.”
“Give it to him, but tell him to make some calls. I don’t want another AP write up like last week, I want some local flavor.”