You're in luck, said Estelle. That's exactly what we want to hear about. How in the world did it go over there?
We begin editing tomorrow. We plan to run a segment Wednesday. Wednesday or Thursday. We've got a lot of footage to sort through.
But we demand nothing less than a preview from our intrepid newsman this very moment, dear boy, said Jerome.
Dan examined his empty coffee cup. He decided to sketch in a couple of details and then bow out. No one liked hearing about someone else's trip anyway. It was like listening to an acquaintance recount the intricacies of his recent house repairs.
Okay, he said, looking up, so: picture no one around for miles except cleanup and construction crews. The military's cordoned off a thirty-kilometer area called The Exclusion Zone. Towns inside are one-hundred-percent vacant. It's like driving through a series of desolate Eastern European sets in the back lot at Universal Studios.
Estelle leaked smoke between her lips.
Everyone just left?
You can still see laundry hanging on balcony clotheslines. Baby strollers lying in the streets. These scrawny cats wandering around the apartment blocks, living off irradiated mice. Otherwise, there's just this eerie, steady wind.
How ghoulish, Naomi said.
They wrap up work on what they're calling The Sarcophagus next month, Dan continued. The structure looks a little like the Battersea Power Station, only bigger — this huge windowless thing with what appears to be a chimney towering out. It's supposed to seal in the damaged reactor, a hundred and eighty tons of uranium, and a thousand pounds of plutonium. Only here's the problem: it can't be built on a sturdy foundation, not with all the radiation the crews would be exposed to. They can only work shifts a few seconds long. Even so, they're losing their hair. Their lungs don't work right. You know what they call themselves?
…?
Biorobots.
All right, said Jerome. That's it. You've had your fun. Now be a nice boy and tell us what's really happening.
The cameras used to document their work? They're so radioactive they have to be buried. You can't stand anywhere near the fire trucks that initially responded to the accident because they're oozing curies. Dozens of workers have already died, but the government forbids listing radiation as the cause on death certificates. And there are already cracks over more than five thousand feet of the surface area of the building. A guy I interviewed in Helsinki told me the crews see rats running in and out all the time, birds flying through holes in the roof. Inside it's swarming with radioactive mosquitoes.
You want I should sleep like shit tonight? asked Estelle. She blew out a long cone of smoke. Because let me tell you something, mister: mission accomplished.
You're right, Dan said. Maybe I should stop.
No way, said Robert. You're in the middle of telling us a ghost story. We have a right to know how you can possibly reach a happy ending from here.
I'm not sure it's one of those kinds of ghost stories, Dan said.
Everyone stared at him.
I've got to give it to you, said Naomi. How do you come up with this stuff?
It gets worse, Dan said. He took a drag off his cigarette, let the hot smoke hang in his lungs. Because of all those cracks? The old reactor hall's going to be covered in snowdrifts this winter. Put that together with the tremors that occur regularly in the area, and there's a good chance of an accidental blending of fuels.
Which means? Jerome asked.
Pretty much another chain reaction.
And Jerome here bitches about the stupidity of Americans, said Robert. At least we keep our radioactive catastrophes within the bounds of decency.
Or maybe the powder from the breaches simply keeps filtering down and mixing with the fuel little by little over the years. There's a ton piled up inside already and the thing isn't even finished yet. If it collapses, this geyser of irradiated particles lifts into the atmosphere. On windy days, there are localized radioactive dust storms. Stay in one for three minutes, and your organs start falling apart.
Robert stubbed out his butt in a large glass ashtray swirled with orange.
You call that a happy ending? he said. He turned to Jerome: This is why people delight in Haring, you know.
Jerome looked like a student called on unexpectedly.
I've lost you, he said.
Who wouldn't rather gawk at a stupid painting of two guys draining each other's little Elvises than listen to this sort of thing? Robert asked. And it's people like you, Dan, who are ultimately responsible for people like Haring's success.
Me?
You should be ashamed of yourself, bringing all this goddamn reality into the American public's living room night after night. No wonder art is going to hell in a handbasket designed by Basquiat.
Oh, my gosh, Naomi said, checking her watch. Look at what time it is. I've got to get going.
Nonsense, said Robert. The conversation's just getting interesting. Another cup of coffee?
I wish. I promised my parents I'd drive them to Van Saun Park for a picnic tomorrow morning. It's becoming a Sunday tradition. Boiled hotdogs, squishy duck turds, and a dead lake in Paramus, New Jersey. What could scream family togetherness more forcefully? Estelle, Robert: you're angels.
It's been great, said Dan, rising. Jean's going to be envious. Hey, I hope I didn't depress everybody too much.
Baloney, dear boy, said Jerome, hoisting himself out of his chair as well. He tugged down his olive-green knit vest over his bright yellow shirt and bright blue knit tie. What are a few Doomsday scenarios among friends? Share a cab uptown?
Thanks, but I think I'll walk. I could use the exercise.
Chattering and laughing, they all moved up the hallway to the foyer. The elfin maid distributed coats and scarves. The guests arranged themselves amid a flutter of thank-yous and flamboyant hugs, then Dan, Naomi, and Jerome were descending in the elevator together, talking about what a nice evening they had had.
Out on the street Dan waited while first Naomi, and then Jerome, hailed cabs, and soon he was walking north by himself. It was one of those instants in the city where despite the intermittent flow of traffic everything seemed to become strangely motionless, hushed, as if all the people usually around at this hour walking their dogs or coming back from the theater had gone inside for the night. The air smelled lightly of swamp water. Central Park looked shadowy, overgrown, the leaves still left on the shrubbery black and shiny.
Strolling past the Met, he relived parts of the evening's conversations and worried he had probably shaken people up with his story. But in a real sense this was why he existed: to shake people up. This was his job. Every night at six o'clock he took his seat before the cameras, straightened his tie, and made people feel uncomfortable. He was the guy who told the country that their thirty-fifth President had just been assassinated, that they couldn't win the war they were waging in Southeast Asia, that the space shuttle had shredded seventy-three seconds after liftoff and yet the crew survived for an additional minute, maybe more.
That's what Dan did. Then he got paid for it. He thereby got to travel, meet movie stars, murderers, athletes, heads of state, models, refugees, ordinary policemen on the beat. From time to time he got to employ those signature metaphors of his that had become inside jokes with his fans. This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O. In the southern states they beat him like a rented mule.
Dan understood he wasn't supposed to enjoy his slow shading into a pop-culture figure, but he did anyway. Every day the news became a little less about itself and a little more about the people reporting it. That was okay with him. You worked the ratings or the ratings worked you.