Your Correspondent, Page 1

Your Correspondent

by Camille Scaysbrook

The hair aimed for Valentino, but the effect was Richard Nixon. The suit, a shapeless grey lunch bag, contained a body that was big, but neither fat nor muscular. The glasses were absolutely necessary. No one wore loafers anymore, and no one owned slacks, but he wore both; brown, tan, orange; orange, brown, olive, five pairs, five days of the week. His face barely made an impression in the mirrored walls of the elevator in which he travelled to the newspaper every morning. Very few noticed it, and very few would notice if it disappeared.

Every morning, for seven years, he tore the papers from the wire, and by afternoon compiled them into friendly announcements. "Local Crime News. Police are looking for a person or persons in connection with National Crime News. Police discovered a hidden cache of stolen goods in a ... ' `A major drug ring was broken when ...' `A man was apprehended while .', `A suspected armed holdup was averted when ...'

"Armed holdup, huh?" Space Cadet would say, dropping a fat stack of photocopies. "Exciting, huh? Just like in the movies or a comic book or somethin', huh?"

He nodded politely. Space Cadet's lopsided eyes were too earnest for him to admit that in fact, he wasn't there, and never had been on the scene, even though he was Your Correspondent At The Scene. It all came out of the tickers, which chattered to one another all day about how exciting things were everywhere else. On a slow day Cueball would have him take a crime that happened somewhere else and substitute in local details. It didn't last long, because he was inclined to select the more sensational stories. The
residents tweaked when they realised there was definitely no jewel store in their town, let alone a criminal gang that had conspired for seven months to rob it. The local police force took just enough time off from their ping pong to mutter darkly; the mayor chastised the newspaper for inflating crime figures, and Cueball didn't care a bean, because it was the most newspapers
he'd ever sold since the meteor shower had brought the astrophysicists and news crews into town and managed to start a major riot over whether Pluto was technically a planet or a meteor.

Now, it was mainly cats in trees, theft of cars left running outside corner stores, egged houses. Some weeks he politely informed his readers that no crimes had happened whatsoever. In a town as small as his it was dull work. Nevertheless, it gave him a simple sense of satisfaction in the presence of justice. Somewhere, benevolent policemen with cleft chins were teaching small children how to cross the street. Somewhere, putting the bad guys behind bars. Somewhere, insurmountable canyons of tall buildings concealed
bullet-ridden back streets.

"Y' need anything photocopied?" said Space Cadet for the third time. Again, in the uncomfortable knowledge that he was Space Cadet's hero, he handed over a folder full of microwave recipes. He felt terrible about calling him Space Cadet, especially as the name was coined by Cueball. But everyone did, and the fact that Space Cadet took the name as an honour didn't make it any better.

"Cheese!" A bright flash dilated Space Cadet's pupils, and Your Correspondent was presented with another squished, squint-eyed photocopy portrait. He pinned it to the noticeboard with the rest.

Space Cadet's mother, Tea Or Coffee Dear, had recently been replaced by an anodyne room with shelves full of plastic-wrapped croissants. He spent a lot of time in there, usually alone, although the water cooler, a mute witness, sometimes bubbled in a sentient way. His supervisor didn't mind. His supervisor was cheerfully occupied Space Cadet's mother.

She had a Minnie Mouse cup with her name on the side. He had the corporate logo of the company who had sprayed his parents' house for cockroaches. He took hers and realised why he'd been sneezing all week. What he thought was asparagus soup had once been coffee.

"Hey, Chris!" New Girl said. She always got his name wrong. "Cookie?"

"Don't - they've gone mouldy. Have one of mine." He twisted Garfield's head off and gave her access to his private stash. Her lipstick was smudged around her lips. It had never occurred to him what happened after lipstick was put on. Clearly, it came off.

"You, er ... you ..."

"Oh!" she said. "Whoops!". Unconcerned, she sponged it off with a napkin. She looked younger now, as young as she really was. How loathesome to think of those translucent lips pushed up against Cueball's bald ...

"You look shocked," she said coyly. He hadn't realised that he did. "What's the matter?"

She knew exactly what the matter was, but she said it anyway. The man amused her. No, he did more than that. His helplessness - it struck a soft place in her mind very close to maternalism, but not far from contempt.

"Come on, Chris -"

"It's, uh -"

"You're a reporter. You must know what goes on. You know what's not fit to print, so forth. The nipple shots, the illicit love affairs, the mistresses?"

How many muscles does she have in her buttocks, he wondered, to produce the exquisite symphony that strained at the navy blue?

She glanced a request to Garfield. Your Correspondent nodded. "Take as many as you like."

"Heey. Thanks! Listen. Can you help me out? What star sign are you?"
"Well, I'm not exactly sure."
"Huh, now?"
"Orphan. I'm not sure of my exact birthdate." he said, simply. "But I celebrate it on the 5th of September."
"Virgo ..." she tapped her notebook with a pen. "Already got a Virgo."
"What's the reason?"
"Oh," she said, taking another cookie, "See, I'm out of ideas for the horoscopes. So, most people kind of have a bit of intuition about what's going to happen next, right? I mean, they don't predict it or plan it or whatever - but they have a kind of rough idea. So I thought I would find one person from each star sign and ask them what they think will happen to them in the next month." She screwed Garfield's head back on. He hoped she would notice his name on the label. "A kind of astrology correspondent."
"I see."
"Well, no matter. If you happen to find out when you were born in the next week or so, give me a buzz, OK? I'm short a Pisces, a Libra, and an Aquarius. Thanks a lot, Craig."

He went upstairs and spent much of the afternoon tracing her initials in a puddle of coffee.

A pattern sprang from the coffee-ground days. At 10:30, New Girl would appear at Cueball's office. The door would shut discreetly. At 11:15 New Girl would retire to the tea room, forehead glistening, luxurious dark brown hair bouncing in an entirely nonchalant, completely unapologetic manner. In this way, she moved from the horoscope to the TV reviews, TV reviews to society page, and presently, to `Goings On About Town'. Every morning at 11:30, Garfield would offer up his bounty and they would chew, he in stunned silence, she in full chatter.

"I'm sorry, I don't want to insult you or whatever, but this town is a fucking drag. I mean, Stuff Happening in Town, or whatever?" She re-cherried her lips. "Nothing ever happens here."
"You from around here?" he asked, knowing she wasn't.
"Nah." - she accepted a stack of facsimilies from a lingerie catalogue from Space Cadet - "Daddy is, the bastard. So, last summer I tell him `I want to be a newsreader'. None of that wading around in shit in some weird country, just a newsreader, OK? So he goes `fine. But I don't want you waltz'n around at some fancy pants Sarah Lawrence Bryn Mawr type gimcrack. You're going to start at the bottom, little lady. Just like I did.' So he sends me out here into the sticks. I mean what do you do around here? For fun, I mean? Shoot road signs, fry road kill?"

"Actually," he said, shyly, "I like to look at the stars. The skies are very clear here." To his surprise, she smiled, genuinely and broadly. "No shit, Claude! I'm totally into that - eighth grade, we went to a planetarium, boom! I mean it was all fake, but I totally ... you know. I mean, in the city, you see one or two, but here, woo! You're waiting for them to pump Pink Floyd through the stereo, know what I mean?"

He didn't. She asked him where he saw his stars. He told her about the barn on his parents' property, omitting the fact that he still lived there. "There was a meteor shower here, some time ago now, but astronomers came from all over the country to see it, and they filmed it all right there. Dozens of them - the brightest things you've ever seen!"

New Girl stirred four sugars into her coffee and smiled. Orthodontics, perhaps. Maybe such velvet skin was cosmetically achievable where she was from. Or maybe it was real.

"I guess there is at least one thing to do around here," she said - was it coy, was it coy? No, it was diffident. He mopped his brow. "I'll have to invite myself around sometime. See ya round, Chuck."

He went his way, she went hers. By the end of the afternoon, he had an expose on the family feud between the Marsdens and the Curtises over who stole whose pedigree Rhodesian Ridgebacks, and a new portrait of Space Cadet to add to the gallery. She had an Agony Aunt column and a ladder in her stocking.

"Real pretty girl, that one, huh?" said Space Cadet. "Don't work much, though." (if only he knew, he thought miserably) "I'd like to take her clothes off and take her pitcher."

Your Correspondent dropped his bagel.

"No, no - not sexy like, my brother's got all the nudie books I'll ever need. Like one of them statues, huh? The lady with the no arms, huh? I reckon she'd look real nice. I'd like to take a pitcher of her and send it to a big museum. D'you think I could do that, huh?"

"I don't know." he said. "Maybe if you practice real hard and take lots of photos ..."

"Yeah, huh." he said, absently. "Guess I better get me a camera. Oh well. Cheese!"

He put Space Cadet's latest portrait in his drawer. The rest of the afternoon was a blur in his mind - alabaster flesh against warm glass, pictures pouring from the hatch, warmer, warmer, sweeter, sweeter. Cheese indeed.

That night, he climbed up into the barn by himself. In the corner still coiled a number of interesting looking cords and apparatus the cameramen had left behind all those years ago, as well as a fist-shaped hole in the barn door (`Kerfuffling Frontman in Fistfight Fracas'). He remembered the silver caravans that had rolled into town, like spaceships descending from Mars, full of fascinating people, people from anywhere but there. A blonde woman with too much hair had let him sit on her knee. How did she know what the weather would be tomorrow? Who told her? Nobody, she said, but that's showbiz. People drank peculiar things and said peculiar words that hadn't gone down at all well when he introduced them into dinnertime conversation. And then, one night, the lights dimmed, the barn door opened over them like a proscenium arch, the stars began to streak the sky. Even they were hushed, all those people. Their faces lost their gloss, they oohed and ahhed, and he could not help but feel proud; as if they, his small family and their small lives in their small town were somehow responsible for putting on this spectacle for them.

As he looked into the sky, he realised it was the first time he had ever been aware of other worlds - other people, fascinating places, exciting pursuits. And these people got to travel around the world, finding other worlds. Places where he would not be him. Perhaps the atmosphere there would press his retinas into their correct shape. Perhaps hayfever and allergy didn't exist there, or maybe it even made you stronger. Maybe your feet could drif from the edge of the barn, as they had in so many dreams, and it would all be so easy, so obvious to fly. This was when he decided to be a journalist.

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