Eddie.
"Of course you do. I find your reviews very fair. And honest. Blunt, but all true honesty arrives bluntly. I appreciate that. There seems to be a general consensus to avoid self-criticism in our community, doesn't there? Not simply in the arts, but in general. I agree with you. It's a new age, I'm all for calling a spade a spade, if you will. Without addressing our deficiencies, how can we ever hope to improve?"
"I guess. So why am I here?"
Marks took the question like a child had slapped him with it, laughed at it, and pushed it away. "You studied at Columbia. They have an excellent yournalism program. So you had Akers, Pavez, Wharton."
"Pavez was my adviser."
"I imagine he'd be an excellent one. He's got a good head on his shoulders, albeit a fat one. He had many good things to say about you as well."
This comment, this was the official alarm. This was the thing that Piper knew made ordinary people pull back yet compelled her to plunge forward. "OK, now this is getting a little bizarre. Why are you calling and asking people about me and why did you invite me here?" Piper made like she was trying to gather her coat from the back of her chair, but Marks must have known she was bluffing. He didn't even attempt to talk until Piper had stopped moving and was looking at him in the face again.
"I have a job for you. That's the short of it. Let me assure you, though, that I was not trying to pry. It's just, well, you know the black middle class is only but so big, you run into people, topics arise. This whole community, it functions on the network of friends, the currency favors. I'm really not trying to be obtuse, it's just that I feel this is a large proposition, so it takes a bit of buildup."
"All right, you got me. Talk." Piper felt herself getting very excited and felt equally foolish about that.
"Right. Well, I just have three questions. Indulge me in those and I'll tell you whatever you like. You went to one of the top journalism schools in the country, you're obviously very intelligent, talented, it's not like you're over the hill in any way. Why are you working at a shameful rag like the New Holland Herald?"
"That's easy, because it wouldn't be the 'shameful rag' you seem to think it is if more qualified black folks didn't run away to the bigger papers and leave it behind," Piper defended.
"Exactly. That's what we are trying to do here at Horizon — stop the brain drain in our community, stop the financial drain as well, build something we can all be proud of. I know I don't look it, but I'm old enough to remember what the Herald was like before the white papers would hire our best and brightest. It resounded. It was important. It covered issues the way no other source could."
"So there's your answer. I want to help bring it back to that point. My goal is to make it something to be proud of again."
"And how would you do that? That's actually the second question, so feel free to elaborate." Marks leaned back in his chair to provide room for her answer.
Piper felt very free to elaborate. There was her plan to dump the tabloid's front-page articles in favor of a full-page illustration cover with teaser lines like the Village Voice, there was her plan to switch from underpaid hacks to clip-hungry interns from New York's top journalism schools who would work for the same peanuts but actually be good, there was her plan to publish short stories and novel excerpts, in exchange offering mere exposure as payment. Piper kept going. There was a wall of self-restraint within her, it was great and wide and as tall as her mind's imagination, but unfortunately it was made of paper and already shredded from all the times she'd plowed right through it. Still, there was a pause for air when she noticed Cyrus Marks's look of amazement and thought that might not be a reaction to the ideas but the fact that she'd just mentioned at least two dozen of them in less than three minutes.
"Well, the Herald could reach its potential again," Piper tried to conclude. "I mean, I guess with these things you just have to have patience."
"Oh, no I don't. I don't need patience," was Marks's response. Piper wasn't surprised at the statement because Cyrus Marks looked to her like a man who believed he didn't need patience. "We, as a people, have had too much patience too long for our own silliness. No, what I need is you. In charge of the Herald, raising the standard, doing all those ideas you just said. So I might as well continue on to my third question. If Olthidius Cole chose to retire in the next year which he has — if he didn't want his son to assume full control of the mantle — which he doesn't, apparently — and if it was within my power, would you consider becoming the new editor in chief of the New Holland Herald}"
"You know, that's a lot of ifs." J/'this was a joke and Snowden was behind it, if this was some sort of passive-aggressive revenge for any past grievance Piper might have cost him, Piper would hurt him. Physically and with great vigor.
"There are no ifs. I've been an investor in the Herald for years now. As of an hour ago, I just upped the percentage a bit. Called in a favor from a friend, you could say."
" I. . I really don't believe this. But say I did, say I did believe this. Say I believe you're going to call me out of the blue, someone you don't even know, and give me a job that I might on paper seem barely qualified for. Say I don't think this is a sick, sick prank, then what's the price? What do you want from me in return?" Piper wouldn't sleep with him, Piper wouldn't put one cell of his body near her own. When you want something so bad sometimes you ask yourself what you'd do for it, but it turned out that no, she wouldn't do that. But where was the line? Piper asked herself, because there was one and it probably wasn't that far away from there.
"You are qualified. Pavez said you did a lovely job editing the Columbia Spectator, and this really isn't that different, is it? Everyone I spoke with attested to your character. So to the 'price.' Just a little project I'd like you to get off the ground. Of course it will involve dropping what you're working on and cutting back on your Herald hours in general, but I assure you you'll find this worth the sacrifice. It deals directly with creating the next generation of black journalists, a talent pool that ten years down the road the Herald can pull from. So, Ms. Goines, I actually have one extra question for you: How good are you with children?"
SLIPPERY
SNOWDEN WAS A new man. Unfortunately, that man was a paranoid, guilt-ridden wreck of one. Don't kill people and think you can remain the same. This new guy, he was completely sober, had stayed so since the morning he'd awoken in clothes that reeked of smoke and it had taken till late afternoon to remember why. The new one didn't watch television, either, not out of any social purist motivation, it was just that even the most escapist of shows ran ads for the news he was trying so hard to avoid in the first place. Snowden was a new man. He didn't like the one he'd become, but the more Snowden thought about it the more he realized he didn't care for the one he'd been before, either.
As a reward for his loyal service, Lester was assigning Snowden the best properties, throwing him the best clients at the day job, happy-face customers with seven years of clean credit, 30 percent down, and low consumer debt. Snowden spent every encounter with these fine happy-face buyers petrified they would spin around with badges and cuffs instead of checkbooks and pens. Be a good realtor and just keep walking through the empty rooms smiling, Snowden kept telling himself. Say stuff like, "The thing that's really wonderful about this," and point at something.