One may think this is “The Trouble with Ferrets… Again”, taken down a little earlier for maintenance, as a not obligatorily careful perusal of the most recent titles in the New Commix & Frameworks section of the Kyiv Unedited website will attest, except now filed in a more recent timeslot under a different name, but generally speaking in a very broad sense returned to its more or less rightful place in the Commix storyline, with the appropriate changes made to the original text, where they were deemed necessary, and other narrative adjustments, alterations, and possibly even improvements.
Yes, one may think any number of things… There are so many different things that one may actually think. Yes, one certainly can…
“What’s on your mind? Oh, I see… Well, I dunno… Do you think it would work…? What about the staff, the other editors, is Cocoa in on this? Bureau Chief, eh! And a lifelong journalist… Russia Wash? What’s that? You say it would save the paper money. Since when do I care about that…? Yes, I do… and no you don’t… What are you getting out of this, anyway? Oh, nothing, you just love the paper and want to work here for the rest of your life. And it’s time for a change: breaking stories about sleazy oligarchs and no more one-word headlines… I’ve got it… and so that strike a few years back wasn’t really your idea… but his, or someone else’s, is that it? Fired? Who said anything about that? Certainly not you, so let’s not start any rumors, shall we? You’re not telling me all this as a shadow editor, who for reasons unbeknownst to me or any other rationally minded person that I’ve spoken to, appears and disappears from the masthead AND website of our publication with the regularity of a fly hovering over a picnic table… but as a consultant – NO – not that, you’re not trying to be my friend either… but as a dedicated journalist who ran away from home at the age of 25, foregoing a promising career as a hockey pro and then a doctor to come to Ukraine and work for this money-hemorrhaging third-rate rag that I now have the pleasure of owning. At any rate, the Christmas holidays will soon be upon us, and would that not be a convenient occasion to break the news, so to be speak, particularly if he would be out of the country, or at least out of town. No, I understand: he’s a close, personal friend whom you wouldn’t dream of stabbing in the back. But why don’t I just take this resume, replete with a freshly obtained local mobile phone number and an updated file photo in which this most promising of candidates for a job that isn’t yet vacant has for some reason dyed his thinning hair? OK, sure, just between us, not that you ever came to see me in the first place.”
Back in the newsroom…
“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! Whom are you people trying to fool? I know that little turd is on the payroll. He just can’t make ends meet as a stringer for 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 on the sly also lets the two-faced, tadpole-legged sneak manipulate articles for the benefit of that sorry collection of local shysters that he calls ‘contacts’. That last business piece just HAD to feature a full-page color mug shot of that clown from Dragonfly Capital didn’t it? Generously quoted, of course, in the accompanying article on the ‘absolute necessity’ of curbing corruption in Ukraine, ‘the urgency’ of attracting Western investment to this post-Soviet backwater that nevertheless offers so much ‘hope’… if only one were to hire the ‘right’ financial advisor!”
Girl hangs up. Phone rings again a few minutes later but at another journalist’s desk.
“Poster editorial, Gothic Girl here?”
“Yeah, I wanna talk to The Ferret, and don’t tell me he’s not there. Tell him I’m a Ukrainian oligarch who wants to get drunk, revealing every stinking secret ever known this side of the Iron Curtain to him and him alone. Or wait, tell him I’m a high-ranking but unbelievably ill-informed Western diplomat, investor or 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 became 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. Or better yet: 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 mangy-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 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, and Hound Dog Face, that trusted personal assistant of no-nonsense chief editor Bret Boner, is quick to make the fetch.
“Poster: Administration.”
But she’s intercepted from across the room by the paper’s iron-willed commander, that guiding light in Ukraine’s window to the world, who taps into the call unannounced from another extension.
“Hello, I’m calling to enquire about the file photo that I believe was recently received by your publication. You see, I just can’t decide whether the naturally gray but receding hairline wouldn’t look better than that moister if more full-colored version that I’d introduced in advance of my employment offer…”
Boner’s 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.
“Then there’s the matter of my shirt. Do you think I should keep those sleeves rolled up… Could I get away with another open button at the neck…?”
Filed by Commix Writer 42M, Day Shift, December 10, 2015