What You Don't Know(5)

And it’s true. Some of it, at least.

But Sammie wouldn’t admit this, not even if someone put a gun to her head and demanded the truth. It’s not exactly something that she’s proud of, that she lets Hoskins touch her, that she puts on a show for him and then goes home and tells her husband lies so she can one-up every other reporter out there, panting to tell a good story. Besides, no one understands the position she was in at the paper, how it was to be there, day after day. Writing boring book reviews and fluff pieces on the local dog show, when all she wanted was to write a good piece, one that mattered. One that could make a difference. She’d hear her editor handing out assignments, but he’d pass right over her every time, and she’d go back to typing up her piece about the knitting club in Highlands Ranch that was donating their blankets to the homeless, or the dog with the prosthetic leg. She’d spent her whole life wanting to be a reporter, she’d thought she’d be big-time, that she’d be a glittering success, and when she’d been hired at the Post, she was sure she’d made it. The rest would be simple. But nothing in life is simple, and so she’d been patient, and she’d waited, and when she saw an opportunity she took it.

But it does embarrass her that all the men talk about her, that they call her names and treat her coldly when all she’s doing is her job, in the best way she can. So what if it involves sex? If she were a man, no one would care. They’d probably congratulate her, give her an award. Her connection to Hoskins allows her to duck under the police barricade every morning while the rest of the journalists are stuck in the cold, standing on the street far back from Seever’s house, with their notepads and recorders and cameras, and some of them have set up trailers and folding tables with steaming urns of coffee and cold doughnuts. There are journalists out there, important people with household names, flown in from New York or L.A., they have tents built in some of the yards and they spend all day out there, in the hopes that something might happen. She’s heard that some of the neighbors are charging the media a day rate for squatting in their yards, a flat fee for every time one of them needs a toilet. But she gets to walk right past them, all of them, gets to see everything that’s happening inside, is already writing her next article in her head as another body is zipped up in a black bag and carried out of the house.

This is something else Sammie has learned: If you’re going to fuck someone, at least make sure they’re important.

So the men keep whispering to one another as they dig up more bodies, and Sammie keeps writing, and she keeps fucking Hoskins. Keep on keeping on, as they say.

*

It’s strange to be in Seever’s house, surrounded by all the photographs of him, to see the dish towels his wife had hung from the hook beside the kitchen sink before she was forced to leave, and the ceramic Christmas tree still in the center of the dining-room table, one of the plastic lights sitting askew. But maybe it’s only strange for her because she used to work for Seever, years before, practically a lifetime ago, before college and jobs and marriage, she’d been a waitress at Don’s Café, one of the restaurants Seever owned. She’d already been working there a month when she saw Seever for the first time, when he stopped by to look over it all, make sure everything was running fine. He was wearing a nice tweed suit, expensive-looking, and his fingernails were polished and clean. He was handsome in those days, with his heavy brow and deep-set eyes and generous mouth, but even back then she’d noticed the weakness around his chin, the softness of his body, and she’d known he’d surely run to fat at some point; he was that type. Seever hadn’t said anything to her that first time—he’d come in during the lunch rush and it’d been too busy for introductions, with everyone running back and forth between tables and the kitchen with trays of chicken-fried steak and creamed corn, potatoes, and okra.

She actually met Seever the second time he came in, shook his hand and told him her name. He was in a clown costume that time, dressed up to entertain kids in the restaurant with his clumsy dancing and clumsier balloon animals. He looked silly; most men would hate to be all done up like that, but he seemed to enjoy it. That was the thing. He liked to make the kids laugh and clap, even if the joke was on him, and there was one little girl who abandoned her plate of pancakes to dance with Seever, and he spun her round and round like a ballerina, until her skirt stood straight out from her body and she was out of breath from laughing so hard. Sammie had watched the whole dance with the rest of the customers, a pot of coffee in one hand and a big smile on her face, the same as everyone else, but Seever had still singled her out when it was over, because he’d seen her looking—of course he had, he was always watching, even if it was only from the corner of his eye.

“You like kids?” he’d asked, coming up as she was clearing off a booth. He bent down, grabbed an empty straw wrapper from the bench and handed it to her.

“I don’t like them so much when they’re screaming,” she’d said, smiling. “But your dance with that girl was pretty cute.”

“Samantha, isn’t it?”

“Everyone calls me Sammie.”

“I like that.”

Later he twisted her a dog out of pink balloons, although it didn’t look like much of anything except two pink balloons. She didn’t tell him that though. And that afternoon, before he’d left for the day, he gave her the yellow daisy he had tucked into his lapel.