He was careful to keep his eyes averted from the surfaces of other people’s desks, too, and looked at no computer monitor other than his own, staring down at his shoes whenever he got up to get a phone book or moved for any other reason. Sometimes I wondered how he made it across the newsroom without bumping into anything. Every now and then, I saw another reporter go out of his way to jostle him. Ethan would apologize and move on.
More than once, he had to call the computer folks to supply a new password. It seems any new one he came up with was soon discovered and then used to change it to another password without his knowledge. I thought he might have complained to management about it, because after about a week of that, at a staff meeting, John said, “The next person who fucks around with another reporter’s computer will be fired on the spot. I will set up security cameras in the newsroom if I have to. The fun’s over, boys and girls.” Ethan turned beet red and shook his head slightly.
I said, “John, who reported the problem to you?”
“Those propeller heads in the computer department,” he said without hesitation. “I can’t make sense out of half of what they say to me, so none of you are to make them talk to me again, understand?”
The next morning, I watched as Ethan navigated his way to his desk. He sat down and pulled a drawer open. All its contents fell out onto the floor with a tremendous clatter. Across the newsroom, there was laughter.
He said nothing, staring at the mess for a moment, then knelt on the floor and began picking up the scattered contents.
I stood up, went around to his desk, knelt next to him, and started helping.
“Please don’t,” he whispered.
“It’s an old trick,” I said, pretending I didn’t hear him. “Don’t open any of the others, they’ll be upside down, too. Someone takes a thin piece of cardboard, uses it to hold the contents in while the drawer is flipped over and reinserted. Very hard to detect first thing in the morning.”
At some point during this explanation, he stopped moving. Mark Baker and Stuart Angert came over and fixed the other drawers while I continued to hunt down paper clips, pens, loose change, and Post-it notes. The newsroom had fallen silent.
John’s hearing is never so attuned to anything as a lack of noise in the newsroom. He came to his door, glanced over at us, then turned to the rest of the room and shouted, “What the hell are you being paid to do?”
It broke whatever spell had frozen the others, and work resumed.
Ethan said, “Thanks,” as Stuart and Mark went back to their desks. Otherwise, he still hadn’t moved or spoken.
“Let’s get out of here for a few minutes,” I said.
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can. Meet you downstairs in five. Don’t forget your umbrella.”
“I don’t have one.”
“We’ll share mine, then.”
I stood up, grabbed my purse, jacket, and umbrella, and left.
He met me in the lobby just when I thought I might have to go back up into the newsroom and haul him out by his ear.
I started walking, and to stay dry, he had to keep up. “Where are we going?”
“Lucky Dragon Burgers. Serves a great breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry, really.”
“I am,” I said.
He didn’t say anything more until we were seated in a booth. I asked him if he was a vegetarian. “No.”
I ordered two Lucky Dragon omelets and a pot of coffee.
He was staring down at the table.
“I was trying to remember an acronym a friend taught me,” I said. “Maybe you can help. It was the word H.A.L.T.-the H stood for hungry, the A for angry. The T was for tired. The L?”
“Lonely,” he said. He looked up. “Your friend was in AA?”
“Yes.”
“How’s he doing?”
“She. That one is doing fine. Not always the story. But she remembers to do little things like taking care not to let herself get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Like a lot of things in AA, that’s not a bad idea for anyone, really.”
“Are you-?”
“In AA? No. But try not to hold that against me.”
“Actually, I’m glad to have a chance to talk to you. I need to apologize to you.”
“Working your steps?”
“No-I mean, I am, but it isn’t that. I’m not at that step yet. I’m-this is on my own. I just need to do this.”
The long apology that followed wasn’t something I needed, but I was fairly certain he had to get it off his chest. He spoke slowly and haltingly, in a manner far removed from that of the glib young manipulator who had put himself forward so often in recent months. The omelets arrived just as he was getting to the part about how he knew he had caused embarrassment to everyone on the whole newspaper.
“We’ll get over it. Don’t let that food get cold. Oh-thanks, and you’re forgiven, and don’t let any of this keep you from moving on from here.”
“That’s it?”
“No. Can I have your sour cream?”
He laughed a little nervously and dished it onto my plate. “It’s not good for you.”
“Oh yes it is. Hair shirts, on the other hand, are really bad for you.”
“Hair shirts?” he asked, puzzled.
I sighed. “I should make you look it up, but-people used to wear them as penance.”
“Oh. Okay.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes. He was, I noticed, starting to tuck into his breakfast with earnest.
My cell phone rang. I apologized to him-I usually turn it off in restaurants.
His mouth was full, but he motioned me to go ahead and answer it.
The call was from Frank. “Lydia didn’t know where to find you, so I worried a little,” he said.
“I’m having breakfast at the Lucky Dragon. What’s up?”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said about Maureen O’Connor. Harmon worked for Eden Supply of Las Piernas. Ring any bells?”
“Eden Supply? No, and there’s nothing about it in O’Connor’s notes that I can recall. Was it owned by some other company?”
“Haven’t had a chance to look it up. It’s not around now, though.”
“I’ll see if I can find anything about it in the newspapers from the 1940s. Maybe they advertised with the Express.”
“Okay, but don’t run anything in the paper yet-I’d rather Yeager didn’t know we were looking in this direction.”
When I hung up, Ethan said, “That was about O’Connor?”
I felt a little rise of anger.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he said quickly.
“You could hardly help it. That’s not what’s bothering me. It’s that-”
“That you were close to O’Connor and I stole from him.”
“Yes.”
“That was wrong, I know. You probably won’t believe this, but-the reason was-I mean, I should never have done it, but-but I love the way he wrote.”
“I do believe that.”
“It makes it all worse, really.”
“Ethan, if we could go back in time and pull all of O’Connor’s writing out of your articles, believe me, I’d jump into the time machine right now. We can’t. You have to live with that. But I knew O’Connor really well, and I know what he’d tell you.”
“ ‘Why’d you steal from me, you stupid son of a bitch?’”
I laughed, which surprised him. “No. He’d tell you to keep your head up.”
He looked down at the table, caught himself, and met my gaze. “Why are you being nice to me? You hated me.”
“When I first came to work for the paper, I hid in the men’s room of the Express one day, and eavesdropped on O’Connor insulting the hell out of me.” I told him about some of my early troubles with O’Connor.
“What I’ve done,” he said, “is pretty different from that.”
“Yes, it is. But you aren’t the first reporter to get off to a rough start at the Express, Ethan. You have talent. You’ve just got to show people what you’ve got, that’s all. Never mind trying to impress them any other way-just use your own skill. Let it speak for itself.”