The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(18)
“Isn’t she a beauty?” the man shouts at me—at least, that’s what I think he says as the wind rushes around me, death a step away.
I nod quickly, trying not to upend my balance and topple to the ground several stories below.
Oh, there’s a rope, and they tell you it’s perfectly safe, but regardless, standing on the scaffolding of a construction site hardly feels wise.
“It’s a beautiful building, Mr. James,” I lie, because I’ve spent half the time up here with my eyes closed. It isn’t as much that I am afraid of heights as it is that I’m unsettled by them and would prefer to keep my feet planted firmly on solid ground. But Hearst said to get him a story, and considering this particular building has been plagued by setbacks, and problems, and whispers of more bribery than usual, there’s certainly a story to be had here.
It isn’t the sort of story I’d normally be drawn to, but if I had to guess, Hearst envisioned an illustration of a girl in a ridiculous dress standing atop a beam overlooking the city to accompany this piece to grab the public’s attention, so here I am. A stunt girl reporter’s work puts her in all sorts of unusual situations.
“Perhaps we can go down to the ground floor and conduct our interview, Mr. James,” I suggest, struggling to keep the utter panic from my voice. A stunt girl never—fine, rarely—loses her composure.
“What did you say?” Mr. James, the site’s foreman, yells over the noise of the building below.
“Let’s get down,” I shout back.
The journey back to the street is infinitely easier than the trip up. Only when my feet are firmly planted on the dirt do I feel the color returning to my cheeks, the panic that imbued my veins lessening.
I reflexively reach for my notepad, but since I’ve been at the Journal, I’ve learned it’s a rookie mistake to jot notes during an interview. It takes away from your overall impression of the event, so instead I work to commit everything to memory until I am alone and can transcribe both the things he said and also my impressions of his mannerisms. There are two parts to an interview: what they say and what they don’t.
“This building has seen its share of setbacks, Mr. James, but it’s clear from talking to you that you run a tight crew. What do you think keeps holding the construction back?”
He scratches his head for a moment, folds his arms over his chest, and then says—
“Well, I suppose it started with the ghost.”
Oh my.
Hearst is going to like this even better now.
I smile.
“Tell me more, Mr. James.”
* * *
—
I’ve been typing up my construction site interview for hours now, trying to separate the facts from the specter of the supernatural, which readers will glom on to even if it’s far more likely that the crew bribed the wrong people rather than that an angry ghost is haunting their job site. Some days the words come easily, the story pouring out of me, and others it is a struggle to wrangle every single word into a workable sentence.
Despite this morning’s excitement, this afternoon is the latter journalistic experience, and I’d do anything to get away from the newsroom for a moment and clear my head.
I’d envisioned a job at a major New York newspaper as a chance to write about the kind of stories I wanted to highlight, to focus on meaningful women’s issues. And even as I knew how difficult it would be, I can’t lie that I dreamed of reading my byline on a front-page story.
The reality is, as so often is true, far from the fantasy.
The newspaper business is more work and less glory than I imagined. The hours are long, my average day clocking in around twelve hours and thousands of words written, my hands cramping by five o’clock from the effort of writing longhand. The competition is fierce, more newspapers and reporters than the demand calls for. We’re all vying for attention with so many newspapers to choose from, all reaching for the scoop that could make or break our careers.
As cub reporters, we learn our trade by doing, so there’s nothing to do but jump in and hope for the best. There are very few of us women in the newsroom, and even fewer assigned front-page stories. We receive half the pay the men do for the same pieces.
And still, there are those women I aspire to be, whose work I look up to, their greatness an inspiration to keep going in the days when the work feels insurmountable.
Recently, Pulitzer’s World printed a report that Nellie Bly was going to fight for Cuba and was recruiting women volunteers for her first regiment. From elephant trainer to crossing the globe in a balloon to military genius, it seems there’s nothing Bly can’t do in her stunt reporting. I keep a notebook filled with clippings of the stories she’s written, an homage to the daring work she’s done to get the story.
One day.
The rest of us who aren’t highfliers are paid by the column size, our salaries barely clearing ten dollars a week. It’s a far cry from the wealth I grew up around, from the millions men like Hearst earn. I am fortunate for my living situation with Aunt Emma, because otherwise I shudder to imagine how I’d support myself.
I’ve gleaned little intelligence of note to share with Pulitzer, added few writing credits. The circulation battle between Pulitzer and Hearst has hardly subsided, though. In a major coup, Hearst managed to steal Pulitzer’s prized managing editor, the legendary Arthur Brisbane.