The Blues & Billie Armstrong 51
THE FELLOWSHIP OF MEN
Previously in The Blues & Billie Armstrong…
My eyes caught up to the cursor when the YouTube homepage appeared and Monihan clicked the play button on a video posted by some kid wearing a Dodger hat in his profile pic.
“You’re a goddamn star,” Monihan said, an odd mix of both doom and glee in his tone.
“Oh, this part is great!” He pulled the corner of the video window to expand the picture. There I was, stumbling, slurring, ranting, punching my car in the face like an idiot. Monihan shook his head, cackling and pointing at the screen. “Jesus, Archer. What the hell got into you?”
I hung my head and rubbed the bridge of my nose between my thumb and two fingers. They say even bad publicity is good publicity, but I wanted to slap myself. “Are you sure Lockhart’s seen this?”
Monihan’s nod was accompanied by what I took to be an expression of fascinated pity. “That new advertiser called, too. They saw it… and they’re pulling out.”
With the Pulitzer buzz as an added selling point, Daniel Lockhart had personally wrangled a big-dollar deal with the local Cadillac dealership. I had helped soften the ground by buying the beautiful new automobile I was now seen punching out on YouTube. The dealership was ready to dedicate half its ad budget to take the entire page next to my column twice a week—a significant chunk of revenue for the Sentinel, plus some bottom-line bragging rights for Lockhart at the next board meeting.
The video itself was something I could live down in time, but shanking this Cadillac deal was a major transgression. Here I’d been having all those sexy New York Times daydreams, and now I might have to kiss Lockhart’s fat corporate ass just to smooth things over at the Sentinel.
“And what’s this—more of your shitty karma?” Monihan said, but now he was looking out at something beyond the glass walls. I followed his gaze and found Valentine Jones standing across the newsroom in a double-breasted navy blue power suit. She spied a lane and began to cut through the rows of reporters’ desks, those dark auburn curls dancing around her face and shoulders and a showdown stare hardening as she approached the door to my office.
I’m sure Monihan guessed she was just another irate subscriber, come to read me her personal riot act for some perceived slight to her religion, political party or some other newly-minted cultural identity—it would not be unprecedented. I am, after all, a professional shit-stirrer. As she reached the door Monihan opened it with an exaggerated bow and flourish, a flash of mock courtesy that seemed to acknowledge the mounting comic absurdity of my morning. He grinned with teeth. “May we help you, ma’m?”
Perhaps this sounds like a disappointing display of schadenfreude by the man I consider my oldest friend. But the truth is men sometimes show intimacy in this way. The confidence to needle your friend at his low points and thereby rub his nose in the brutal realities of fate (and the futility of all complaints), well, that indicates a high level of male fellowship.
But, on this particular morning, my good fellow had no way of knowing that he was holding the door open for a handgrenade launched in the direction of my life. Perhaps Valentine did not know, herself.
She came into the little room and filled it up by the way she stood in front of my desk with her fist wrapped tightly around the handle of a brown leather satchel. “I won’t be ignored,” she said, glaring down at me in the Aeron chair. “One way or another you’re going to answer some questions.”
She had her mother’s jade green eyes and the same hand-on-hip stance. The shock of recognition blurred my vision. For decades I’d spotted Billie in crowds even though she wasn’t there. At baseball games, on television, at concerts or carnivals. A hint of boldness in the swish of a skirt, some wry mischief in a jostle of red curls, an accidental facsimile of that defiant but playful hand on hip. Now her daughter stood in front of me, the echo of all those fretful sightings.
I tried to muster an unperturbed smile. “Tom Monihan, meet Valentine Jones, attorney at law.”
He apparently saw this as an entertaining plot turn. “With your mouth, I always thought you’d get fired and/or sued someday. Not on the same day, though.” He gripped her hand. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Jones. Now, are you suing this reprobate, or are you stuck defending him?”
“Neither… just yet,” she said with a cruel tease of a look slanted my way. “Today I’m just a delivery person.”
She reached into her bag and Monihan said, “Oh, perfect—it’s a subpoena isn’t it? King, I think you’re about to get served.”
The Blues & Billie Armstrong is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance of the fictional characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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