“Hey Steve, spiff up that promo piece for the Silver School of English,” shouts the editor.
It’s freezing in the newsroom, so Kowalski’s got a knit cap pulled down over his face below the eyebrows, so that his eyes look like they’re hiding behind something, like those of a punished kid in a dark closet peeking out between a crack in the door.
“And I want that Day & Night review that you promised me last week from the Doll House Café…”
“We did that a couple of months ago, Kowalski,” shouts someone from across the rows of desks. “Why did you go back there, anyway?”
“He had a date,” blurts out someone else.
“With whom, his mother or his laptop?”
“His left hand,” shouts someone else.
A loud obnoxious laughing then ensues, but not because the mockery, jibes and insensitive bantering at the expense of the poet turned cub reporter has risen to the level of legitimate jocularity, genuine humor… no, but only because no one at the Cantankerous Curmudgeon really liked Kowalski.
It wasn’t even a subject up for debate. Neither the paper’s established reporters (and there were only two of them), the editors (an older guy who ended up doing all the editing himself), the layout boys who were computer geeks and couldn’t stand humanity in general, nor the cleaning women (an entire team) who would steal a pencil or pad of paper off your desk if no one was looking – none of these people could think of a reason to defend Kowalski and often themselves took part in mocking or belittling him, each in his own way.
One time, someone stuck a note to his back as he was slumped over his desk copying verse, and it read: “Pop me, I’m a pimple”.
Even CG, the paper’s only star reporter, would kind of push him to the side as she passed him in the hallway.
And there was a rumor, which no one took seriously, that she had kicked his ass at the last Christmas party for trying to “crowd her” near the water cooler.
Apparently, Kowalski was drunk (after two beers) and went into his Elvis Costello routine, which meant that he would strike a pose vaguely resembling the ‘80s crooner, leant back on one foot with his arms folded, staring condescendingly at the object of his affections… in this case CG.
But it only pissed her off, it was said, so she just pushed him into the Men’s Room and shoved his head into one of the urinals. One of the reporters later said that he personally saw Kowalski washing off his press badge in the sink and that the smell of piss on him was “noticeable”. But reporters at that paper are always making things up.
“An informed source at the agency said that Veteran Detective Dirk Dickerson had been committed to a Podil-area insane asylum shortly following the events of that night…”
Kowalski stops typing to scratch his dandruff-ridden head beneath the knit cap he’s wearing and simultaneously darts a few furtive glances around the newsroom to see what his fellow journalists are up to, like possibly planning another practical joke at his expense. He wouldn’t put it past any of them, that’s for sure.
“Dickerson’s partner Jack Step, according to the same source, was also at the scene of the crime but was whisked out by an ambulance crew in an apparent coverup…”
“Am I gonna get that promo piece for the Silver School, or whatever the fuck it’s called,” shouts the editor.
But Kowalski has his head hung low over the keyboard as if he can’t see the keys well.
In reality, on some unconscious level, or simply as a matter of acquired habit, acquired solely from his experience as a journalist, which really wasn’t that extensive (maybe even just a couple of months, and all at this weekly rag), he expected, or just couldn’t afford to rule out, that one of his colleagues might fling something at him over the tops of the computer stations that lined the newsroom, that one of them might launch a missile – be it a part of someone’s lunch or some item of the journalistic trade, like a pen or wad of paper – right into his face, and then – this is the worst part – just laugh raucously like a band of hyenas for several minutes thereafter.
“… going all the way back to early 2013 and the murder trial of left-bank loser Saint Stephan… himself now facing justice, when, to the horror of jurors and the judge alike, he choked the life out of well-known fat-ass phony Zippy Zamazda… where he is believed, but not confirmed to be, a guest of Hollywood notable Nicolas Cage…”
Kowalski closes his file, stores the article that he’s working on onto a flash drive and begins to…
“He’s not doing it. I just fucking know he’s not doing that promo piece. And I’m gonna get another phone call from that pretentious dago bastard from the Silver School of Idiots or whatever it’s called…” the editor is heard shouting.
“Isn’t that guy’s wife a whore.”
“How the hell do I know,” shouts the editor.
But Kowalski’s already down the aisle and almost out the door. But ‘almost’ doesn’t mean he’s out, because there’s still the little matter of getting past Little Miss Underoos – that’s right, CG, “star reporter”, the pushy little know-it-all that likes to push men’s faces into puddles of piss…
“Talking on her little mobile phone, is she? No doubt to some ‘all-important’ source, someone who could even be fucking her.”
Kowalski at this point slips into one of his earlier mentioned rape fantasies before being brought back to reality and his senses by the ring and then opening of the elevator door.
And when he gets out, several floors down and into the lobby, somebody’s watching him.
“Pimple face on the way out; pick him up on the street.”
“I got him.”
But Kyiv-based detective John Smith is watching the watchers from a conveniently located and properly administered sandwich shop located directly across the street from the editorial offices of the Curmudgeon.
Filed by The Half Guinea, late night, January 24, 2018