The Trouble with Ferrets is
They don’t pick up the phone
Don’t work home alone
The Trouble with Ferrets is
They don’t stay in their cage
Always seeking the stage
“Kyiv Poster, Pixie Sticks speaking.”
“Hello, may I speak to The Ferret?”
“I’m sorry but there’s no one here working by that name…”
“Yeah, right, sister! Who are you people trying to fool? I know that skunk-breathed little turd is on the payroll. He just can’t make ends meet at that London-based broadsheet, can he? Basement bars in Kyiv aren’t as cheap as they used to be. Also nice to have an office to go to… beats banging on a keyboard at home in a hamster cage with nothing but a water bottle and exercise wheel to amuse himself.
“Sidelining as a shadow editor lets the sissy-cigarette smoking sneak manipulate Poster articles for the benefit of that sorry collection of local shysters that he calls ‘contacts’: ‘Of course that front-page business piece needs commentary and a flattering photo from the CEO of Dragonfly Capital (heh, heh), or why not get a quote from Sasha Suckup, Loose-Lips Lena. For that matter, PR Executive Welsh Losser would nicely fit into that story you’re working on, heh, heh… not that I told you so.’
“Now you connect me to ol’ tadpole legs this instant or I’m going to waylay him on the staircase of that place as he’s flapping his jaws like some big shot, pacing back and forth with a mobile phone under his chin while some stooge he invited out of the newsroom for the latest editorial intrigue hangs around waiting for a chance to be ‘clued in.’”
Girl hangs up. Phone yawns in man’s hear, only to ring a few minutes later but at another journalist’s desk.
“Editorial, Gothic Girl here, may I help you?”
“Yeah, I wanna talk to The Ferret, and don’t tell me he’s not there,” says a completely different man’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Tell him I’m a Ukrainian oligarch who wants to get drunk, revealing every sleazy secret ever known this side of the Iron Curtain to him and him alone. Or, no, I’m that high-ranking but unbelievably ill-informed Western diplomat, investment banker, Eurocrat ready to hang on his every word. Yes, I’m prepared to meet in a subterranean water hole of his choosing, sit through the well-worn preamble of how he ran away from home and a promising career as a doctor at the age of 25 to become a journalist, miraculously maturing into the Secret Squirrel of the former Soviet Union. I don’t even mind hearing how his sister, who looks like his brother in drag, was undressed by Russian border guards during a family vacation to the former Evil Empire in the 1980s.
“No, wait! I’ve got a better idea. Just tell him I’m someone he met last night while plastered and talking shit. That’s it. The lanky Romanian guy shaped like a coat hanger who works for a never-heard-of NGO; or that dog-headed bitch from New York who’s technically from the Ukrainian Diaspora but so obnoxiously inebriated in every conceivable social situation that even the idiots in folk aprons who’ve colonized this city since Independence don’t recognize her as their own. Or, better yet, the elfin Englishman with a degree from Oxford who’s read every book no one else would ever pick up…”
The receiver is replaced on the handset. The line goes dead.
The phone rings again, the girls squeal in disgust.
“I’ll take this one,” barks Bret Boner, chief editor of Ukraine’s leading English-language weekly, from the newsroom’s all-too-ordinary corner desk. His eyebrows bristle with tension, the fur on his arms goes stiff, the mutton chops that frame the features of his once touted Hollywood good looks are now fierce in aspect, frightening to behold, a formidable tool of an editor-in-chief used to imposing his will on the world.
“Boner speaking, your dime, not mine.”
“Bret is that you? Saints be praised! For the love of journalism – I got you on the first try!”
“Who the hell are you calling, mister?”
“Why you, Bret: You said so yourself when you answered the phone. You old newshound, city desk sleuth with a hard-on for headlines, no-nonsense reporter with nothing good to report, flatfoot with a notepad turned flat-assed one-man wire-service wonder, copy-cum-paste-me office plant with coffee breath, pincher of pretty interns’ butt cheeks, up the ladder apple shiner with nowhere to go but down, soft-ball interviewer with soft-headed leads, paper pusher, glory grabber, man on the scene after the fact with the fact-checking skills of a quality-control clerk at a Ukrainian collective farm…”
“Now just a minute…”
“I haven’t got a minute and neither do you, Bret, if one is to believe all those photo ops in the Poster featuring you and the Poster’s latest head honcho, the inimitable Cocoa. How does one get into Harvard indeed? A – pay; B – study hard, get great test scores and prove that you’re a disabled Negro with at least one Native American ancestor, a queer, a leftist and willing to promote the cause of all the aforementioned on your Facebook page; or C, listen to Cocoa!”
“Who the hell are you…?”
“Robert B. Bobbin, or Rob for short. My friends call me Bob. You can call me anything you want but don’t get your shorts in a knot. That’s it… ease back in the armchair of power, the front row of ambition, ringside seat at Ukraine’s window to the world. Ease that gearshift into auto pilot and enjoy a pleasant ride to fame, fortune and out-of-your-age-category Internet acquaintances.
“But hark, lo and behold! What’s that up ahead in the distance? Methinks I see a dead ferret, road kill waiting to be measured in chalk. Quick, Bret, stop the car. Get out and help. Hand him the phone to call for help.”
The line goes dead – this time on the caller’s end.
Boner returns to his desk – steely-eyed master of the paper’s nerve center, shoulders stooped, legs bowed, fists clenched – to find a still unopened email on his computer:
“Seniors Night at Sweaty’s Place: RSVP”
Filed by 38S, Swing Shift, December 4, 2015