Oh, Fake Me.
-Alan A.
See Foriegn Desk Editor ASAP
Mira
So said the post-it on his computer. The former proofreader reflexively traced a curving line between the “i” and the “e” to demonstrate the appropriate spelling. He couldn’t stop himself from inscribing the symbols of the dead language in red pen whenever he felt stressed. Mira would have e-mailed him unless the Foreign Desk editor needed him upstairs before he could boot up his computer.
No coffee stop. At that moment in the break room, the last French Roast pod danced a foil-unwrapping pirouette before the metal arm slammed it into the compressor. He heard the drip of the boiling water recede as he climbed the stairs. At the summit, the industrial gray international newsroom loomed, intimidated, and ultimately made him feel like an obtrusive spider, tolerated only when he lingered in out-of-the-way corners and devoured miniscule bugs. Why was he here?
Mira’s cubical by the corner office defied every rule of media conformity. Instead of the plastic frames of kids or kid scribbles, she had covered the walls of her cubical with headshots of every character, major and minor, from Death Note. Black and red strings tied different characters together in ways that were probably significant, Alan had never seen or read enough about it to fully know why. The large headshot of the protagonist was in the center, of course, most strings radiating out from his mug like spokes from a wheel. Mira had kissed the central figure on the cheek in a moment of exceptional fandom, and Alan found himself unable to keep his eyes from returning constantly to those naughty purple impressions.
Alan coughed and wondered if she knew his last name. Mira turned away from her twin computer screens long enough to nod her head and say “In there.” He hesitated for a moment and she gave him a second glance that seemed calculated to remind him that she was single-handedly supporting the IT needs of eighty-seven employees, and would always be deemed superior to him in every way by the Corp. The knowledge that he could best her in a spelling bee or grammar contest didn’t comfort him this time. He went in.
Louis Tulwar made him wait for twenty minutes while he made several phone calls, including one that sounded suspiciously like a lunch order. Finally satisfied that he would not be receiving a sandwich with Mayo, the foreign desk editor hung up and crooked several fingers at Alan, who counted twelve steps between the door and the mahogany desk.
“Alan. Fuckin’ Alan A!” He didn’t know Alan’s last name either. “I have a very important job for our last and certainly not least reporter” Alan used to get excited when he heard that, but the editors had dashed his hopes too many times. Tulwar continued as if he were reading a telemarketer’s chirpy script, not actually meeting Alan’s eyes and gauging his level of enthusiasm, real or faked. “Pak-E-Stan-E leader was killed. You read about that? Of course you did. Anyhoo, it turns out that her party has a new leader, and the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
He went on to explain what Alan already knew; the candidate’s nineteen year-old son was her chosen successor, and her husband - a former convict - had been tapped to lead the party until the son was old enough to do so. Tulwar was predictable, and Alan could easily guess what he wanted, but that didn’t stop him from trying to head him off at the pass.
“I’d be happy to dig up tons of information on the father,” Alan said. “He’s got a long and sordid past, so there’s plenty of material.”
Tulwar grinned and pointed his index finger at Alan, working the middle finger as if it were squeezing a trigger. “Cool as that would be, I’ll be working on that. That’s the sort of thing that requires a seasoned journalist who actually lived through that administration.” At that time, Tulwar was a high school sophomore who had never read anything longer than the directions for shaking a can of spray paint. “What I need YOU to do, is find out more about that boy. Set a young person to catch a young person, I always say. Here’s a tip, no charge: start with that facebook site that the young people go so crazy over. Find out what music he listens to, grab any photos you can find.” A new thought occurred to him. “And e-mail me those photos, along with pictures of any cute friends of his that link to his page. And hurry.”
Outside, Alan thought of all the interesting politics and intrigue that Tulwar’s assistant editors would be finding on the colorful and infamous widower. Corruption. Crime. Incarceration. Racketeering. Meanwhile, he would be plumbing a website for softcore pictures of Oxford coeds that Tulwar could drool over in the name of “research.” But before he turned to his inevitable fate as an underpaid twenty-something, eternally the youngest staffer, the portfolio-stagnating reporter for the most dismal news corporation on the east coast, he had a flash of inspiration that appeared as a web of lightening in his mind. He could still remember it when it faded, and it aligned perfectly with Mira’s 2D Death Note mobile.
She glanced at Alan and then dismissed him, but she would never intimidate him again. He sat next to her keyboard and grinned into her surprised kohl-lined eyes.
“Mira. How fast can you build a fake website?”