She shook her head yes, then no.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me we were being followed. I just can’t believe it!”
“It’s just that we were so caught up in our wild adventure. I didn’t want to turn back and risk disappointing you. Honestly? I thought I lost the guy by the time we got off the freeway.”
“We never should have gone. What was I thinking?”
He looked at his watch and stood up slowly.
“Look, I’m sorry about all of this, and we can talk about it later. But right now I have to go be a sportswriter. Don’t suppose you want to come along,” he teased, “now that we’ve come out.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Okay. Okay. I’m just trying to lighten up a bit, Honey.”
“Lighten up? This is serious, and you want to laugh it away?”
Chapter 37
It was late afternoon when Chrissy left the plant and headed home. The story of the underground plumes, or lakes, raced through her head.
This could be big. Maybe too big for a small local paper like the Register.
She took out her notes and booted up her computer. She jotted some numbers down on a piece of paper, Googled the words “Central Park Reservoir” and checked how much water the popular reservoir actually held. The volume was comparable. She made one more phone call to Dan Lipsey to double-check her facts.
An hour later she had crafted a story about the underground lakes. When she read through it, she felt nervous.
A pile of newspapers lay on the floor, most of them from New York City. She had been checking them out, considering her next opportunist move as a journalist. She had really become a professional, shouldn’t she move on? Could she pitch this to the New York Times? Hmm. Probably not.
She flipped though one of the major tabloids, a daily paper called the Metro Record and paused at a full page ad by ALLPower. Didn’t she take a writer’s workshop with one of the editors who worked at the Metro Record? She looked through some files and found a roster of speakers. Soon she found the name she was looking for.
Why not? She asked herself. What do I have to lose? Go for it, Girl.
The editor’s phone number and e-mail was on the list. She was surprised to actually get him on the phone.
“Greg Thurston, Metro Record.”
“Hi Greg. It’s Chrissy Dolan. We met briefly at the media conference last year. I have a story for you about the nuke plant up here. Are you interested?”
“We’re about to put the paper to bed, but sure, I’ll take a look at it. Is it about the ALLPower plant?”
“Yes. Can I shoot this over to you now?”
“Okay. But we don’t usually run stories about the plant; the big accident was a one-time thing. It’s really not New York City–centric.”
“I think you might be interested in this one.”
“Okay. I’ll take a look at it. No promises.”
The phone clicked off abruptly. She looked at her screen and hit Send. About twenty minutes later, her phone rang.
“Greg here at the Metro Record. Is this really true? Poisonous lakes the size of the Central Park Reservoir under the nuke plant?”
“Yes. That’s what the plant people are telling me.”
“Wow. But did they make the comparison to the Central Park Reservoir? Or is that your own take?”
Of course it was my own take. I’m a professional reporter, aren’t I?
“My own take,” she said. “I did the math. The cubic volume of water in the underground lakes is close to the amount of water in the reservoir.”
“No kidding. I like the spin. Okay, look. We’ll take the story, but you have to rewrite it tabloid-style. Do you know how to do that?”
“Think so.”
He rattled off a few ideas for the lead sentence and told her to cut about three hundred words. He wanted lingo that was more charged, sensationalist. For Chrissy, it was a whole new vocabulary. If she could revise within ten minutes, it could very well land in tomorrow’s paper.
“And Chrissy—anyone else running this story up there? Or anywhere?”
Up until that point she had completely forgotten about her own paper—about Al, her boss.
“Chrissy? Hello?”
“Yes. Sorry. No. No one else has the story. It’s an exclusive for you guys.” Her confidence surprised her, but wasn’t she doing business with a top city paper. She was so very professional.
She looked at the clock and started the rewrite. She agonized over the details of the math, kept them in, then took them out. Metro Record articles were shorter than she had ever written. It was known as the picture paper and always had much more space for large photographs than for the copy. Her time was running out. She quickly scanned the story and clicked Send.
Chapter 38
The story was on page seven in the upper right corner, the spot where your eye automatically landed right after turning the page. Under the headline it said “Lakes the size of Central Park Reservoir” and then “Metro Record Exclusive.”
But the byline was the best part: By Chrissy Dolan, Metro Record Writer.
The first line was completely rewritten, as was most of the story, with only some of Chrissy’s sentences left untouched. Radioactive water leaking under the ALLPower Nuclear Power plant just 24 miles from Manhattan, has grown to roughly the size of the Central Park Reservoir, plant officials told Metro Record.
Chrissy woke up early, anxious to see if the story ran online. It was there, large as life, with a picture of the sprawling plant on the river. She ran down to her corner deli and bought six copies of the Metro Record, hardly able to contain herself. When she got back, the phone was ringing.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Al screamed over the phone.
“Hi, Al. Oh—you mean the lakes? I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t know they would really print it. I—”
“Look, Bitch, I gave you every opportunity to become a decent reporter, and what do you do? You get a story like this and sell it to another paper? You screwed me and my paper in the process! Is that your way of saying thanks?”
“I’m sorry, Al. Mea culpa—”
“Mea culpa, my ass. Clean out your desk and get out. I don’t want to ever see your face again.”
She went blank. The exhilaration of getting a story in a big city paper suddenly soured. She realized that her inflated ego and drive to make it big had blinded her, that she had shown blatant disregard for her boss, the guy who gave her a break, taught her real reporting. The guy who finally hired her full-time. All she wanted to do was get ahead. Wouldn’t other reporters for a small-time paper do the same?
Should she beg for her job back? Wouldn’t he want her, now that she had had a byline in a popular city paper? But who was she kidding? Working at a little weekly paper was like moving backward. After all, she had made it to the Metro Record. She was a real pro now and couldn’t turn back.
Chapter 38
Stella heard about the underground radiated lakes on the radio, an AM news station that picked up stories from the papers. The announcer credited the Metro Record, paraphrasing the story in three brief sentences.
It was early, and Bob wasn’t up yet. Stella threw on her clothes and scampered down a few blocks to the newsstand and scooped up the tabloid, a paper she’d never usually buy, but this was an exception. She had the New York Times delivered, formerly her paper of choice before the Daily Suburban and Lou Padera. When she got home, Bob was up, sipping coffee, still in his pajamas.