The Sixth Station(2)
He was resentful that I’d been nominated for a Pulitzer for covering the same war at the same time, while his newsweekly, U.S. News, hadn’t nominated him. And he’d taken one for the Gipper, while I’d come home in one piece.
Me? I was jealous that I never got sent back to a war zone again. Weird? Sure.
But I took his leaving me like a bullet to my heart anyway. I cried for a month straight, drank too much with my friend Dona and my hairdresser pals, hardened my heart, and threw myself into my work.
A decade after we’d said “I do,” however, we still couldn’t say “I won’t.”
And so I found myself—all those years later—faced with a ringing phone. Since it is for reporters a genetic impossibility to ignore a ringing phone, I reached for it.
I sincerely wished he wouldn’t call the morning after the night before. (Big lie.) Better yet, I wished we wouldn’t ever have a night before again. (Truth.)
Be careful what you wish for.
I picked it up without bothering to look at the caller ID. “Go away, Donald,” I said.
“Alessandra?” I heard a copy kid at the other end say. Oops.
“It’s the City Desk. Can you hold for Dickie Smalls?” As if holding for Dickie Smalls were an option. I knew it would take about fourteen seconds for the whole newsroom to know I’d slept with Donald. Damn!
Mildly surprised, I held on, of course, knowing that it was usually not good when a call came through from Dickie early in the morning: It always meant something unexpected—an assignment that would send me to the Bronx or Queens or, worse, complaints about a story I’d filed the night before.
Bleary and hung over, I nonetheless held on for Managing Editor Dickie Smalls, a man who devoted his life to overcoming his name. His job was second only to that of editor in chief—the only one to whom Smalls ever spoke with any respect.
“Russo? Dickie,” Dickie yelled into my headache. Dickie, who usually didn’t have his first drink until at least 11:00 A.M, was probably still sober, I realized.
“You got the TV on? Put on New York One,” he continued yelling without expecting an answer.
I obliged by reaching for the remote on the nightstand, and flicked to NY1. They were showing a helicopter view of my neighborhood, the United Nations area of Manhattan, while the voice of Simon Franks, one of their top reporters, clearly trying to keep his voice controlled, was announcing, “I’m looking down on this massive sea of humanity, the likes of which I certainly have never seen! The crowd, the mob—whatever you can call such a thing—stretches along the Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza park over onto Forty-seventh Street and First Avenue, up and down First Avenue from Forty-second Street to Fifty-seventh Street, and the cross streets from Forty-fourth through Forty-seventh as far west as Madison Avenue!
“Seriously folks, this city has never experienced a sight like this before!”
And he was right about that. Today was the start of the terror trial—tribunal, actually—of terrorist Demiel ben Yusef.
While a tribunal like this one would normally have been held at The Hague, the World Court building had sustained huge damage in a terrorist bombing several months earlier and was still uninhabitable. The perpetrators had never been caught. So, no, while most New Yorkers were not happy to have this mess of a security risk in our town, we reporters were thrilled.
You could hear it in Franks’s voice:
“And I venture to say,” he continued, not missing a beat, “that every person down there is desperate to catch even the tiniest glimpse of Demiel ben Yusef, who goes on trial today—perhaps as soon as a couple of hours from now!”
I am a jaded reporter. I have reported on everything from 9/11 to war to Hurricanes Katrina and Anthony, the earthquake in Haiti, and many of the increasingly now-commonplace natural disasters of incalculable suffering around the planet.
This was different. Something, indeed something I didn’t really understand—maybe it was blind faith or deep hatred—had driven hundreds of thousands of folks out of their homes, jobs, and schools. They’d wheeled, walked, and traveled from their apartments, condos, houses, hospitals, nursing homes, churches, synagogues, mosques, banks, and government offices to protest, to ogle, to see in person the most vicious criminal of our time.
Even I was shocked by the size of the crowds.
“You watching? You understand what’s going on here?” Dickie said.
“Of course I do,” I said, trying not to let my excitement show.
My heart started pounding. What did Dickie really want?
Please let this be the break I need. I swear this time I’ll do it their way. Please tell me something good. Tell me I’m gonna cover …