Winder put the press release on Charles Chelsea's desk and went home. By the time he called Nina, it was nearly one in the morning. He dialed the number and hoped she would be the one to answer.
"Hello, sugar," Nina said.
"It's me."
"God, I need to talk to a real man," she said. "I had a fantasy that got me so hot. We were on the bow of a sailboat. Making love in the sun. I was on top. Suddenly a terrible storm came "
"Nina, it's me!"
" but instead of hiding in the cabin, we lashed each other to the deck and kept on doing it in the lightning and thunder. Afterwards the warm rain washed the salt off our bodies...."
"For Christ's sake."
"Joe?"
"Yeah, it's me. Why don't you ever listen?"
"Because they don't pay me to listen," Nina said. "They pay me to talk."
"I wish you'd get a normal job."
"Joe, don't start."
Nina was a voice for one of those live dial-a-fantasy telephone services. She worked nights, which put a strain on her personal relationships. Also, every time Joe Winder called, it cost him four bucks. At least the number was easy to remember: 976-COME.
Nina said, "What do you think about the lightning-and-thunder business? I added it to the script myself."
"What was it before something about whales, right?"
"Porpoises, Joe. A school of friendly porpoises leaped and frolicked in the water while we made love. Our animal cries only seemed to arouse them."
Nina had a wonderful voice, Winder had to admit. "I like the new stuff better," he agreed. "The storm idea is good you wrote that yourself?"
"Don't sound so surprised." She asked him how his day had gone, and he told her about the stolen voles.
Nina said, "See? And you thought you were going to be bored."
"I am bored. Most of the time."
"Joe, it's never going to be like the old days."
He wasn't in the mood to hear it. He said, "How's it going with you?"
"Slow," Nina said. "Beverly went home early. It's just me and Miriam."
"Any creeps call in?" Of course creeps had called who else would bother?
"The usual jack-off artists," Nina reported. "They're harmless, Joe, don't worry. I just give a straight read, no moans or groans, and still they get off in about thirty seconds. I had one guy fall asleep afterwards. Snoring like a baby."
Sometimes she talked about her job as if it were a social service, like UNICEF or Meals on Wheels.
"When will you be home?" Winder asked.
The usual, Nina said, meaning four in the morning. "Want me to wake you up?"
"Sure." She had loads of energy, this girl. Winder needed somebody with energy, to help him use up his own. One of the drawbacks of his high-paying bullshit PR job was that it took absolutely nothing out of him, except his pride.
Hurriedly Nina said, "Joe, I got another call waiting."
"Make it short and sweet."
"I'll deal with you later, sailor boy."
And then she hung up.
Winder couldn't sleep, so he put a Warren Zevon tape in the stereo and made himself a runny cheese omelet. He ate in the living room, near the speakers, and sat on a box because there were no chairs in the apartment. The box was filled with old newspaper clippings, his own, as well as plaques and certificates from various journalism awards that he had received over the years. The only important journalism award that wasn't in the box was the single one that impressed anybody the Pulitzer Prize, which Joe Winder had never won.
When he was first interviewed for the publicity-writing job at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills, Joe Winder had been asked if he'd ever gotten a Pulitzer. When he answered no, Charles Chelsea had threatened to put him on the polygraph machine.
"I never won," Winder insisted. "You can look it up." And Charles Chelsea did. A Pulitzer on the wall would have disqualified Joe Winder from the PR job just as surely as flunking a urinalysis for drugs,
"We're not in the market for aggressive, hard-bitten newshounds," Chelsea had warned him. "We're looking for writers with a pleasing, easygoing style. We're looking for a certain attitude."
"I'm flexible," Joe Winder had said. "Especially my attitude."
Chelsea had grilled him about the other journalism awards, then about the length of his hair, then about the thin pink scar along his jawline.
Eyeing Winder's face at close range, the publicity man had said, "You look like a bar fighter. Did you get that scar in a fight?"
"Car accident," Joe Winder had lied, figuring what the hell, Chelsea must've known the truth. One phone call to the newspaper, and any number of people would've been happy to drop the dime.
But Chelsea never said another word about the scar, never gave a hint that he'd even picked up the rumor. It was Joe Winder's journalism achievements that seemed to disturb the publicity man, although these concerns were ultimately outweighed by the discovery that Winder had been born and raised in Florida. The Publicity Department at the Amazing Kingdom was desperate for native talent, somebody who understood the mentality of tourists and crackers alike.
The Disney stint hadn't hurt Joe Winder's chances, either; he had worked among the enemy, and learned many of their professional secrets. So Charles Chelsea had set aside his doubts and hired him.
That was two weeks ago. It was still too early for Winder to compare the new job with the one at Disney World. Certainly Disney was slicker and more efficient than the Amazing Kingdom, but it was also more regimented and impersonal. The Disney bureaucracy, and its reach, was awesome. In retrospect Joe Winder wasn't sure how he had lasted as long as he did, six months, before he was caught having sex on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and fired for not wearing his ID card. Winder felt especially bad that the young woman with whom he'd been dallying, a promising understudy to Cinderella, had also been dismissed over the incident; she for leaving Main Street during Mickey's Birthday Parade.
During the job interview at the Amazing Kingdom, Charles Chelsea had told him: "You work for us, you'd better keep it in your pants, understand?"
"I've got a girlfriend now," Joe Winder had said.
"Don't think you won't be tempted around here."
Winder hadn't been tempted once, until today. Now he was thinking about Carrie Lanier, the fearless beauty inside a seven-foot raccoon suit.
This is what happens when you turn thirty-seven, Winder thought; the libido goes blind with fever. What else could explain his attraction to Nina? Or her attraction to him?
Being a newspaper reporter had left Joe Winder no time for such reckless attachments. Being a flack left him all the time in the world. Now that he was forbidden to write about trouble, he seemed determined to experience it.
He finished his omelet and opened a beer and slumped down on the floor, between the stereo speakers. Something had been nagging at him all afternoon, ever since the insufferable Chelsea had drafted him to help with the robbery crisis. In the push toward his deadline, it was clear to Joe Winder that none of his writing skills had eroded his speed at the keyboard, his facile vocabulary, his smooth sense of pacing and transition. Yet something from the old days was missing.
Curiosity. The most essential and feral of reporters' instincts, the urge to pursue. It was dead. Or dying.
Two strangers had invaded a family theme park in broad daylight and kidnapped a couple of obscure rodents from an animal exhibit. Winder had thoroughly and competently reported the incident, but had made no effort to explore the fascinating possibilities. Having established the what, he had simply ignored the why.
Even by South Florida standards the crime was perverse, and the old Joe Winder would have reveled energetically in its mysteries. The new Joe Winder had merely typed up his thousand words, and gone home.
Just as he was supposed to do.
So this is how it feels, he thought. This is how it feels to sell out. On the stereo, Warren Zevon was singing about going to the Louvre museum and throwing himself against the wall. To Joe Winder it sounded like a pretty good idea.