The guys at work are gonna celebrate when she gets fired. "And I'll be popping the champagne." She twists the cap off a half bottle of Calabrian red and rips into a packet of chocolate wafers. The combination is infelicitous, but she's too drunk to care. On the TV, Toto is impersonating a doctor. The minibar is empty. She closes her eyes, yanks the covers up. She is asleep.
A thunder of blasts-she jumps up, breathless. After a terrible instant, she orients herself: the hotel. Television, on. Outside, fireworks. She checks her watch. It's a few minutes before midnight. The paper is going to fire her.
She goes out into the hall to watch the explosions from a window that gives onto the street. The sky sparkles. The bangs are ceaseless. All around the city, choruses rise:
"Sei!"
"Cinque!"
"Quattro!"
"Tre!"
"Due!"
"UNO!"
On a rooftop across the street, teenagers scream-no one can stop them tonight. From the roof's edge, they fling champagne flutes, which tinkle in the gutter. A distant ambulance siren whines. A man in a trench coat hurries down the sidewalk, studying the screen of his cellphone. Smoke from the fireworks rises up the street lamps like phantoms.
She knows the minibar is empty but checks it again. She tries to sleep. The noises peter out, but she can't drift off. She's wide awake. They're definitely going to fire her. Fan-fucking-tastic.
Herman Cohen said, "One more mess-up, Ruby, and it's curtains." They're looking to cut staff. Everybody knows who's next. The question is when they're going to do it.
She looks at her cellphone. She could call Kurt in Queens and wish him Happy New Year. But then he'd ask what she was doing, what sort of party she'd gone to.
From her toilet bag she fetches the Drakkar Noir, drips it on her hands, rubs it on her cheeks. She closes her eyes and inhales. It was months earlier that she bumped into Dario on Via dell'Umilta; it had been years since they'd seen each other. He laughed that she still remembered him using Drakkar Noir. "Haven't used that in ages," he said.
She opens her mobile and brings up his number. She doesn't dial, but holds the phone to her ear. "Hello," she says to the dead air. "May I please speak with Dario? Hi, Dario, it's me. If you want to drop by, you're totally welcome." My hotel is nice. Seriously, I don't want to cause trouble. But I enjoyed getting that drink with you. "What about if you were to drop by? Just for a few minutes?" I'm pretty tired anyhow.
She calls him using the hotel phone so he won't recognize the number.
He answers. "Pronto?"
She doesn't respond.
"Pronto?" he repeats. "Chi e?… Pronto?" He pauses. "Non rispondi?" He hangs up.
She calls back.
"Chi e?" he says. "Che vuoi?"
"Don't scream at me," she replies in English. "It's Ruby."
He sighs. "It's the middle of the night. It's New Year's. Why are you calling me?"
She's silent.
"Fifty calls from you in the last few weeks, Ruby. Fifty."
"I'm sorry."
"Why are you calling me?"
"It's just."
"Answer me."
"Sorry."
"Stop saying 'sorry.' Answer my question. This is getting ridiculous. Fifty times. Do you have something to say?"
She can't speak.
"Ruby, I'm married. I'm not interested in finding someone. I don't want anything with you. I don't want to hear from you, I don't want to see you. I don't want to have another drink with you. I don't want you to call this number again. Please."
"Dario."
"If you call me again, I'll have to-"
But she hangs up.
She finds a nail file in her toilet bag and digs it into her thigh until she breaks the skin. She widens the wound, then stanches the blood with toilet paper and washes her hands under scalding water.
The maids wake her the next morning.
"Not yet," she mumbles, then falls back to sleep.
Front desk calls. It's past noon. She's late for checkout.
She smells Dario's cologne on her still. As she pulls on her trousers, they catch on the gash on her thigh. No time for a shower. She stuffs her possessions back into her overnight bag, looks in the mirror, tries to bring her hair to life. "My last day at the paper." It's New Year's Day; her shift starts at 2 P.M. "Today is the day." This is when they fire her.
She rolls her overnight bag down the street. She could go home and shower, but instead she walks toward St. Peter's Square. The pope's Angelus speech is over, and the crowd is dispersing. She passes through tides of people, yellow Vatican kerchiefs around their necks. The basilica stands there like a throne, with humankind at its feet. She is ordered out of one vacation photo after another. "Sorry, would you mind just?" they ask. She shifts aside. "Excuse me, you're in mine now."
She is hoping that a romantic couple will ask her to take their picture. She loves that-being, for a moment, admitted into their union. But no one asks. Two young Mexicans even prefer to take the photo themselves, the man extending his disposable Kodak before himself and his new wife. He counts down and, as he reaches zero, Ruby-who stands a distance behind them-sticks her hand into the background of their shot. The camera flashes, she drops her hand, no one is the wiser. When they get home, she'll be there forever.
When she reaches the newsroom, it is empty except for Menzies. She switches on her computer, not even bothering to disinfect her workspace. They will have fired her via email. And someone has stolen her chair. Typical. She scans the room. Does this guy ever leave?
"Oh, sorry," Menzies says, jumping up as she approaches. "I'm in your chair. Here, please. Someone took mine and I thought you weren't here today. I know that's a lame excuse. It is amazingly comfortable, by the way."
"You can request one if you want. Only took me about six years."
"Here." He pushes her chair over. "We both got stuck with the crappy shift, huh."
"What's your job today?"
"I'm actually running the show. Gulp. Get ready for a bumpy ride. Kathleen and Herman both have the day off, so it's just me. I'm sort of sweating bullets," he says. "Incidentally, I have something for you that's going to redeem me on the chair theft." He rummages through his backpack and pulls out a CD. "I've been lugging this back and forth to work for days now. Keep forgetting to give it to you. Remember we were talking that time about Tony Bennett versus Frank Sinatra? I think this may settle the matter. Live at the Sands. You will be converted to Frank."
"Hey, thanks. When do you need it back?"
"That's for you to keep."
She touches her chest with surprise.
"You have to tell me what you think of it," he says, talking fast, unnerved by her emotion. "Some of Sinatra's lead-ins to the songs are great. I think you're gonna love it."
"That is so thoughtful of you."
"It's just a copied CD, Rube! No big deal, seriously."
Awkwardly, she hugs him.
"No problem," he says, pulling away. "No problem. By the way, did you get that email I sent you?"
"What email? Is something the matter?"
"Not at all. It's about that headline on the nuclear-arms story. You did that head, right?"
"About how everyone's freaked out over Iran and North Korea? Did I fuck it up?"
"Not at all-your headline was great: 'Kooks with Nukes.' I suck at those one-column heads."
Clearly, he doesn't know they're firing her. He must be out of the loop.
She rolls her chair back to the copydesk and looks around the newsroom. Broken venetian blinds cover the newsroom windows, the strings tangled half up, half down, casting broken grids of shadow and sunlight across the grouchy old computers, their cooling fans grumbling away. Twenty years here. "My whole career."