Straight No Chaser

Mmmrrrragghhh

I LIED. monday again, m again, three days left on the countdown (where'd those other six days go?) and i'm increasingly nervous because i can't imagine showing up in a strange city to be picked up and chauffered around by someone who made me so mad last night i couldn't even sleep. i'm running on about two hours and i have so much to do this morning, preparations for a meeting with a guy from rhode island to take place on wednesday, plus i still need to figure out why my inter-office email and messaging systems aren't working, buy an outfit for church on sunday, paint my nails and exfoliate like a madwoman, in that order. and eat, maybe, except i did more of that over the weekend than i probably did all semester at school.

rather than think about any of those things, i'm going to post the problem piece of the story i've been working on for grim. taken out of context it won't make any sense, but trust me, that's how i want it. read it when it's finished and you'll see why it's crucial that this part be perfect. i'm going for a tone that's not my usual; clipped and newsy and kind of terse. i'd love some guidance. i just hate this section.

"We both wrote for the Gazette. She wrote features; I wrote news.

I wrote about events, about leaders and the community. My work was centered on hard facts and follow-up, bounded by regular deadlines. I spent a steady six days in the office a week, rarely leaving earlier than eight in the evening. I pounded out one front-page bombshell after another.

Janet wrote lengthily about nothing, and even that only eight times a month. She averaged two office days weekly. Her deadlines were flimsy, her stylistic standards slippery. All of her features were written in arresting present tense, daring readers to question their urgency.

From Tupperware party trends to soccer mom stress, every lightweight topic was given the same ridiculous fanfare. No great difficulty for someone who could spin a world-class drama from so little as an unsavory stare in the third-floor breakroom.

'But really,' she was quick to point out, the only time we ever argued the merits of our respective crafts, 'you're the one whose work depends on other people's misery. You, not me. You live on drama.'

'Well,' I shot back, 'at least I don't live for it.'

Anger stained her face and breasts a flushed red. She was beautiful then and thereafter, or at the very least, manageable. I'd finally found her hotbutton. I didn't intend to use it often, but it was there.

We'd been introduced by a friend of mine, Janet's cousin. She'd advertised us to one another as 'perfect complements.' Like most non-writers, the cousin mistakenly assumed the Gazette was enough to connect us.

I'd explained the truth, that we may as well have been a scuba diver and an anesthesiologist for all the differences between our goals and methods as journalists. She'd pointed out Janet's breasts, whispered that they were real. I'd agreed to take her to dinner.

We had sex in the newsroom once. It happened on a whim, hers, and we finished just in time to avoid being caught by my editor.

She bought herself a ring in our third month of dating. A modest half-carat solitaire set in rose gold, it twinkled wildly when she cornered me in the breakroom.

'I want you to propose to me,' she whispered, pinning me against the wall behind the vending machine. Her toffee skin glowed, and her chest, as usual, bobbed desperately above the plunging neckline of her knit sweater.

'I think it's a bad idea,' I told her, shutting the velvet box. 'I have a deadline in half an hour.'

'I'm sorry about last night, Jay,' she said, flipping the box back open. She took out the ring and slid it into my back pocket, leaning in close. I could feel the brush of her nipples through the white cabled wool. 'You know Eric's like that with everybody.'

My mind resisted the image of my newsfloor colleague with my would-be fiancee and focused instead on her eyelids. Today they shimmered in chocolate tones to match her tight brown skirt. 'I don't trust you,' I said.

'You don't have to yet,' she insisted, tucking the ring box back into her purse. 'I'll earn it afterward. But I need somebody reliable. It's easier this way.'

I made my deadline with minutes to spare. She met me for coffee afterward and showed me the notes for her own upcoming story. Reading through the illegible scribbles, I decided building trust the hard way would be every bit as tedious. I passed the notes back to her with the ring on top, telling her to put it on. I had to get back to the office to finish up the city council story.

Eric floated by the next morning to congratulate me. 'Lucky man,' he laughed, dropping a stack of edits on my desk. His hand brushed the picture of Janet that stood propped by my computer.

I read her column every week, and hated it."

(important to note that i wrote features in high school, and am notoriously long-winded, and that writing this story has proven one of the biggest--and most interesting--writing challenges i've faced in a long time. each one of these sentences has been pared down countless times, and yet each one is still too long. i promise--i hope--all five other sections are much better.)

(oh yeah, and i hit a thousand views at the end of last week. on this journal, that is. kind of exciting, right?)