cut it. You gotta have a better excuse than that.”
He had one. And, yeah, tired would do it when a man had been carrying a load of heartbreak for eight years. Dan knew the story, but it wasn’t something either man had ever discussed.
“Stick around, this bash can’t last forever. God, what did I ever do to deserve this kind of punishment?” He shook his shiny bald head and tried to look as if he weren’t loving every minute of it.
“Braves game. If I leave now I can probably make it home by the third.”
“Mets’ll take ’em, you don’t want to watch the slaughter.”
“In your dreams.”
“You know where I live if you want to talk.”
Rocky nodded. Dan nodded. Message sent and received.
He wasn’t ready to talk about what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Financially he had to do something, but he didn’t have to decide yet—not for a few more weeks. Or months. Maybe if he got hungry enough, he could find the motivation to try a weekly column. Two different syndicates had put out feelers.
But first he had to get over Julie. His marriage had ended in the summer of ninety-four, when a drunk driver had rammed head-on into the car his wife had been driving home from the library, breaking her back and causing irreparable damage to her head. He had buried her six months ago. He hadn’t cried then. More than seven years of watching her lying there, alive and yet not alive—Julie and yet not Julie—had used up his lifetime quota of tears.
For seven years he’d taken her bouquets of her favorite flower. Flowers she couldn’t see, couldn’t smell, but he told himself that deep down, she sensed they were there. And that he loved her—would always love her, no matter what. Finally in early February, on a cold, rainy morning, he had buried her beside her parents, after a private memorial service. Then he’d gone home alone and deliberately drunk himself insensible.
A week later he had handed in his resignation, poured three bottles of double-malt whisky down the sink and stocked up on colas. He’d spent the summer brooding, watching baseball and rereading War and Peace. Once the baseball season ended, he’d promised himself, he would start thinking about what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
It had taken Dan’s retirement party to pry him out of his apartment and back into circulation. About time, he acknowledged with bitter amusement. His social skills, never particularly impressive, had grown dull with lack of use.
“Mac, glad to see you.” Quietly, he greeted a guy who had once covered the White House for one of the major networks, then edged past him.
“Hey, Rock—where you been? Haven’t seen you around lately.”
“Rocko, good to see you, man,” someone else called out.
He made it about halfway to the door, weaving his way through clusters of people he knew vaguely. Got held up between one of the massive sofas and a cluster of women picking over the bones of some poor devil obviously known to them all.
“Did you see him at that last press conference? I swear, if I looked like that, I’d slit my—”
A redhead wearing a black suit about two sizes too small leaned forward, sloshing her drink dangerously close to the rim of her glass, and said in a whisky-thickened voice, “Honey, I peeked into his underwear drawer, and believe you me, those rumors are the gospel truth!”
Gossip was the order of the day. Snide comments, catty remarks. Rocky glanced at his watch. He’d planned on being in and out within twenty minutes, tops. It had taken him that long just to work his way across the room. Anyone who had been around pols and media types as long as he had should have known what to expect. With scandal in D.C. as plentiful as cherry blossoms in spring, it didn’t take much effort to pick up a thread here and another one there and weave them into a story that could ruin a few lives and leapfrog a career.
Thank God he hadn’t chosen that route. He didn’t have the stomach for it. Once he’d realized that his objectivity as a reporter was beginning to give way to advocacy, he had asked for reassignment. It had meant not seeing as much of Julie, but then, the hours spent by her bedside had been more for his sake than for hers. The doctor had told him right from the first that, while she might appear to be responding, critical portions of her brain had been injured. That it was only a matter of time before her vital functions began to shut down.
Despite the prognosis, he had gone on hoping. Reading to her, taking her flowers, relating news about people they both knew. Resignation had set in slowly, over a matter of years. He wasn’t even aware of when he’d stopped hoping.
Someone bumped into him, spilling a drink on his sleeve.
“Oops, sorry.”
“No problem.” He had to get out of here. This time he almost made it to the door. “Excuse me—pardon me.”
The woman blocking his exit turned. Her eyes widened as she gave him a slow once-over. “Well, hello, honey. Not leaving so soon, are you?”
“Another appointment.” No thanks. It’s been a long, dry spell, but I’m not that hard up.
Three women emerged from one of the suite’s two bathrooms and paused, still talking, blocking the door to the hallway. A brunette with a spectacular super-structure was saying, “Well, anyhow, like I said, the first two publishers turned it down flat. They as good as told us to take it to the tabloids, but the very next day my agent showed it to another publisher and he offered us a six-figure advance, and my agent said—”
“Forget what your agent said, Binky, check with a lawyer. He’s the one you want beside you the first time you’re sued for libel.”
“No chance. Who’s going to step forward and claim credit for something like that? Besides, my agent says I’m safe because this is a first-person account and I’m not actually naming names.”
“Aw, come on, Binky, you’re not claiming to be Sully’s first, are you?”
All three women laughed. “Are you kidding?”
Amused in spite of himself Rocky squeezed past and waited for the elevator. The woman called Binky was still holding forth. If he wasn’t mistaken, she did a social column for one of the weeklies. He’d once heard her chest referred to as the Grand Tetons.
“Listen, I’m talking group stuff here,” she said, her heavily made-up eyes sparkling avidly. “Kinky like you wouldn’t believe! Poor Sully said his wife was about as exciting as wet bread. He had a taste for fancier fare, if you know what I mean.”
“I met her once at a fund-raiser. His wife, I mean. She struck me as real uptight. All the same, I’d watch my back if I were you. You know what they say about those quiet types.”
Rocky would take his chances with a quiet type anyday over these pampered piranhas. He felt sorry for the wife of whatever poor jerk they were discussing. Evidently she’d been victimized first by her husband and now was about to be pilloried all over again by the public’s insatiable appetite for dirt.
“Yeah, well who’s interested in her?” Binky unbuttoned her black jacket to reveal the scrap of ecru lace she wore instead of a blouse. “Did I tell you they’re rushing
