The Submission - Amy Waldman [53]
But now she was a Columnist—she always imagined it capitalized. Chaz had tossed out the idea amid the frenzy around her story. It was a way to hype the scoop, get as much play out of it and her as possible. Her ego warmed to the idea. They had already taken her picture, which thankfully flattered more than this morning’s mirror image. Now she needed the words.
Chaz, last night, had given her some tips on how to proceed. The most important quality in a good columnist, he explained, was certainty: “No ‘he said, she said,’ just ‘I say.’” She should seem to have answers. “People want to be told what to think,” he said, swilling his martini. “Or they want to be told that what they already think is right.”
But her habitual itch wasn’t for telling people what to think but for finding out what they didn’t know. Her mind kept straying to that meeting of the families at the high school, to her blowing it with Claire Burwell, turning her hard. Alyssa knew sometimes she got a little desperate without meaning to and that it scared people. She never felt it coming, only saw the wreckage afterward.
This line of thought took her, as it often did, to Oscar. He was the News’s—maybe the city’s—best law enforcement reporter, surprisingly dapper for a short, squat man with square, black-rimmed glasses and mere tussocks of hair. He composed himself each day: an ironed shirt, a vest of subtle plaid or black, a natty tie. He wore well-cut cuffed pants and oxfords, always shined. He believed in the gym. He had a large nose and squinting eyes, and yet carried himself as if unaware of his own unattractiveness. They spoke the same language, a callous patois peculiar to reporters: a building collapse was a “great story,” a fire that scattered families along with the ashes “the most fun they ever had.” Outsiders hearing this might be shocked at the coarseness. But these stories were their quarries, not their tragedies. Alyssa had mistaken this tribal bond for something more, and for a brief period Oscar permitted such entertainments. Then the other shoe, the rejecting shoe, dropped, and it hurt like hell. A new newsroom, a fresh start: it would be easier not to see him.
Like a scratched record—it depressed her that she was old enough to scavenge similes from vinyl—her mind kept returning backstage at the high school. An energy secretive, charged, angry vibrated between Claire Burwell and Eileen Gallagher. Alyssa sensed it now as she hadn’t then, when she’d taken off in pursuit of Claire. She’d never circled back to the mother. “Eileen,” she wrote on an envelope close at hand, and drew a box around the name. She wondered where Mrs. Gallagher went to church.
Back to the column. “The problem,” she typed, and stopped; “with Islam,” she resumed, and stopped again, this time extracting a Mint Milano. The import of her mission, the magnitude of the challenge—her first first-person story!—were reason enough to break her “no sugar before noon” rule. It was also the only food she had in the house.
She chewed and swallowed. Her stomach heaved violently. Islam was violent. It believed killing innocent people was acceptable. It didn’t like women. It didn’t like other religions. It was as hateful as her nausea. She was going to puke again.
“The problem with Islam is Islam.”
She had one sentence.
Trying to pretend nothing unusual had transpired, Mo went to work the day after his press conference. Before heading up to the firm, he lingered by the elevator, hoping to see Thomas, dreading seeing him. Thomas must be furious that Mo hadn’t confided in him, warned him, or, perhaps worst of all, invited him to collaborate on the entry. Mo had acquitted himself dishonorably: he knew this. In the Kroll family, he was tantamount to the fourth child,