Inside, I grabbed a shopping cart and rummaged through the hardware aisles. I’d planned on buying tubes of silicone sealant, but when I squinted at the print on the packaging, I learned that the stuff took twenty-four hours to cure. I didn’t have that kind of time. I interrogated the other suspects on the shelves and learned that epoxy sealant cured in four hours. Still on the long side, but I could work with it. I swept twenty tubes into the cart. I also tossed in two caulking guns, a forty-foot garden hose, and two pair of cotton work gloves. On my way to checkout, I passed through the toy section and, on impulse, picked up a dozen red, blue, and yellow plastic fish.
Ten minutes later, I lugged my shopping bags into Hopes and plopped them on the floor next to our table. Joseph didn’t ask. He just waved at the waitress and ordered another round. And then another. And another.
At closing time, Joseph bullied the bartender into illegally selling us a half-dozen bottles of beer to go. We staggered out of the place with our purchases and walked three blocks to The Dispatch. There, the big garage doors on the northeast side of the building were raised so the box trucks could roll in to load bundles of the final edition.
We tugged the sweatshirt hoods over our heads and averted our faces as we passed the building’s surveillance cameras. Once we slipped inside, we walked swiftly toward an unlocked steel door that opened onto a concrete and steel staircase. We climbed two flights and emerged inside the newsroom. It was empty, only a couple of overhead lights left burning.
The aquarium, my pet name for Twisdale’s office, stood in the middle of the vast newsroom. Its four glass walls were eight feet high, leaving a gap between them and the newsroom’s ten-foot ceiling. We dropped our bags beside it, pulled on the gloves, loaded epoxy tubes into the caulking guns, and set to work.
Sealing the seams at the corners and along the tile-covered concrete floor took about twenty minutes. When we were done with that, we sealed the door, laying the epoxy on thick. I’d overbought. We had three tubes left over.
“Now what?” Joseph said.
“We wait until it cures.”
“And if somebody walks in on us?”
“We hide in the toilet stalls. Probably won’t happen, though. The morning shift isn’t due in until eight.”
We slumped into chairs at the horseshoe-shaped desk where the copy editors used to work, popped open a couple of bottles, and got back to serious drinking. After my second beer, I turned my cell on and started playing Angry Birds. In my inebriated state, it didn’t go well. Joseph got up, rummaged through the reporter cubicles, emerged with a crime fiction short story collection, and sat down beside me to read. After a half hour or so, the book slipped from his hands. He began to snore.
At quarter past five, I roused him.
“It’s time,” I said.
For years, I’d imagined how funny it would be if someone sealed the aquarium and filled it with water, but it had taken a night of heavy drinking to make me realize what a brilliant idea it really was.
Pulling on the cotton gloves again, I uncoiled the garden hose, tossed the business end over the aquarium wall, and dragged the other end into the men’s room. There, I screwed it onto the threaded faucet in the custodian sink and turned the water on. Then I turned to the urinal and emptied my beer-swollen bladder.
When I emerged, Joseph was standing in front of the aquarium, hands on his hips.
“Think it’ll fill by the time the morning shift comes in?” he asked.
I watched the water gush from the hose, spread over the floor, and begin to rise.
“Should be half full, at least.”
We’d worn gloves when we worked with the hose, caulking guns, and epoxy tubes, but somehow, I had the presence of mind to remember that I’d plucked them from the Walmart shelves with bare hands. I went back into the bathroom and came back out with a stack of paper towels. Together, we went to work wiping away my prints. When that was done, we did the same with the twelve empty beer bottles. Then, for no good reason I can think of now, we cleaned up after ourselves, tossing all the refuse into a trash can.
We were wiping down the desk and chairs we’d used when something occurred to me.
“Oh, shit,” I said.
“What?”
“I almost forgot the best part.”
Where was that other shopping bag? Had I left it behind at Hopes? Then I spotted it under the copy desk next to the chair I’d spent much of the night in. I opened it, took out the plastic fish, and tossed them one by one into the aquarium.
Joseph giggled. I did, too.
“Time to go,” I said.
It was all we could do to stifle our laughter as we dashed down a different interior stairway and pushed through a steel exterior door. As soon as we burst outside, the burglar alarm went off. We ran across the street, ducked into an alley, and turned toward home.
Later that Sunday, I rose well after noon. My head was pounding. I pulled on some clothes, stumbled into the kitchen, and found Joseph stirring a pitcher filled with his vile hangover remedy. He poured the mixture into two tall glasses and handed me one.
“I may be a drunk,” I said, “but I’m not crazy.”
A hangover is a symptom of alcohol withdrawal, so the surest cure is more booze. I poured myself a shot of Bushmills and threw it down. Together we wandered into the living room, collapsed on the couch, and snapped on the TV. We watched the Red Sox all Sunday afternoon before switching the channel to ESPN. Our stomachs begged us to leave them alone, and for once we listened. Sometime during the third or fourth replay of SportsCenter, we fell asleep.
Monday morning I got up late again, stumbled down the stairs, and collected my mail from the box in the hall. Then I opened the outside door and fetched the daily paper from the stoop. Upstairs, I tossed four frozen sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiches into the microwave and started a pot of coffee. When I dropped the sandwiches on the kitchen table, the smell roused Joseph from the couch. He trudged in and snagged the sports page. I scanned page one and spotted a two-deck, one-column headline at the bottom of page one.
VANDALS ATTACK DISPATCH NEWSROOM.
It was accompanied by a photo of Twisdale’s office, where plastic fish bobbed in what looked like about six feet of water. According to the story, the damage was estimated at seven thousand dollars.
I slid the front page to Joseph. He glanced at it and laughed. Now that I’d sobered up, I didn’t find our escapade all that funny.
“Think they suspect you?” he asked.
“Oh, sure,” I said, “along with the forty other people the company let go in the last year and everybody who’s got a beef with anything they printed.”
“A lot of suspects, then?”
“Hundreds.”
I finished the paper and turned to the mail. A credit card bill, three offers for more credit cards I didn’t want, and a little package. I didn’t remember ordering anything. Puzzled, I tore it open and found a pale blue box with gold lettering. Inside were a gift card and a heavy sterling chain, each link in the shape of an old-fashioned typewriter. It looked expensive. I flipped the card open.
I’m sorry. I was wrong to doubt you. Please call me.-Yolanda.
I draped the chain over my head and let it settle on my neck. I liked the way it felt.
“Sweet,” Joseph said. “Is it from her?”
“It is.”
I snatched my cell from the table and placed a call.
“Good morning, beautiful.”
“Hi, Mulligan. Did you get my peace offering?”
“I did. Not sure it’s appropriate, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not a writer anymore.”
“Baby, you’ll always be a writer. Nobody can ever take that away from you.”
“Thanks for saying that.”