At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(69)
"None of your business," she said out loud. "None of your damn business."
She swung her legs out of bed then did a few stretches. Faint streaks of light pushed their way through the oyster white fabric shades at the windows. She pushed the shade aside and peered across the yard at her father's cottage. The blinds were drawn. She could see there were no lights on inside. A red Toyota, probably Laquita's, was parked in the driveway next to Gracie's truck.
Domestic tranquility, she thought then turned away from the window. Who would have thought Ben would find it long before his daughter?
#
"We're up shit creek," Andy Futrello announced to Noah the moment he and Sophie walked into the newsroom, "and Levine's got the paddle."
Noah looked pointedly at his little girl then back at Andy. "Let's watch it, okay?"
"Sorry. I'm not used to seeing a kid around here."
"Yeah, well that makes two of us." He helped Sophie out of her jacket then settled her down at an empty desk with her crayons and coloring book. "So what's wrong?" he said to Andy.
"Ann Levine's in the hospital," Andy said. "Heart attack and it looks like she won't be getting her column in on time."
"How is she?" Noah had grown up with newspaper types. He knew all about their mastery of understatement.
"I don't know how she is. All I know is that we've got a hole in the editorial page and it needs to be filled in the next forty-five minutes or we're in trouble."
"We've been in trouble for quite a while," Noah observed. "Levine isn't going to tip the scales much either way."
"Check out the list of advertisers yet, Noah? Levine brought in half of 'em. She goes, they go."
"What is it exactly that Levine writes?"
"That family shit—" Andy glanced toward Sophie. "I mean stuff. Warm fuzzies, like if you crossed Donna Reed with that Martha Stewart dame and they gave birth to somebody who could write."
"And that pulled in the house and garden money."
"That pulled in house and garden and bookstores and it grew from there. Without the revenue Levine pulled in, we'd be dead and buried."
"They'd bolt after missing one column?"
"Who the hell knows but I sure don't want to risk it. I don't have good feelings about this, Noah. We don't have that kind of cushion to play with."
"If my mother ends up selling to Granite News Syndicate, that won't be a problem."
"A lot's been happening the last few months and your mother—and don't get me wrong, she's a great woman, really knows what's going on—but since your mother went in for the broken hip and all that, she's stepped away from the fray and let me tell you, it's a lot rougher now than it was." He told Noah that Granite News was getting cold feet and any slip in circulation would be enough to kill the deal.
There was a part of Noah that wouldn't be disappointed at all if that happened. Granite News was your typical conglomerate, one more concerned with syndicates and cutting costs than with providing good jobs for good people who loved the newspaper business. He had tried on more than one occasion to question his mother about her choice but each time Ruth had neatly changed the subject. He wondered how committed she really was to the venture.
"So we need some stories while Mary's on the disabled list. You're a writer, Andy. Give us some."
"I'm a sportswriter. I can't do that home and hearth crap."
"There's got to be somebody who can handle it."
"Most of us are straight news guys. We report what we see. Your old man knew how to write the essays that got noticed. Mary knows how to write the ones that bring in money."
"So you're saying we're up the creek."
"Yeah," said Andy. "That's what I'm saying." He paused, then continued, "You did some writing over there in Europe, didn't you?"
"Some," Noah conceded, "but it was mostly ad copy. I sold a few op-ed pieces to the American papers and—" He stopped cold. "I'm not on staff."
Andy started to laugh. "You own the staff."
"Yeah," said Noah, starting to laugh himself, "I do, don't I?"
"So why don't you give it a try. It's not like we have anything to lose."