Rubout (8 page)

The publisher was surrounded by his three courtiers: Simpson Tolbart the chief operating officer, Charlie the managing editor, and Roberto the city editor. I could tell that the publisher was the biggest bigwig in this group. He was wearing the kind of gaudy golf clothes only really rich guys can wear without anyone laughing out loud. And loud was the operative word. His pants were bright green and his golf shirt was canary yellow. Simpson, the
Gazettes
number-two man, looked only slightly less ridiculous in yellow-and-green plaid pants and a pale-yellow golf shirt. Charlie wore a red Polo shirt that matched his nose and red plaid pants. Roberto, the lowest man on this big chiefs’ totem pole, was wearing the most normal clothes: a powder-blue golf shirt, khaki pants, and penny loafers. His face was fixed in an obsequious smile. As the publisher and Simpson talked and Charlie nodded sagely, Roberto’s head bobbed up and down in agreement like one of those toy dogs in a car window.

Georgia, looking ten years younger in a sea green Lacoste outfit, waved me over to her group. A breakfast buffet had been set out for us. There were mounds of strawberries and melon slices, miniature bagels on silver trays, iced bowls of whipped butter, cream cheese, and strawberry cream cheese, and huge urns of coffee, decaf, and hot water for tea. I poured myself a cup of decaf and sugared it heavily to ward off all that healthy food. It was the ungodly hour of seven-thirty on a Saturday morning, and I felt awkward in my pink golf shirt and khaki pants.
Normally I’m a Donna Karan creature. Wearing this preppie stuff made me feel like I was forced to talk slowly in a language I didn’t understand well.

“You’ve met Tucker Gravois,” Georgia said, indicating a mild-looking gray-haired type with not one but two old St. Louis names. The man sounded like a street intersection. He also sounded like old money, which you would want for a vice president of business operations in St. Louis, where connections counted. Tucker was a pretty decent guy for a business type, and we always had congenial conversations when we met in the
Gazette
elevators.

Next to him was our very own Steel Magnolia, Yvonne “Just Call Me Vonnie” Cutte, our multimedia director. We exchanged curt nods. Vonnie saved the honeyed Carolina accent for the men. I’d tangled with her when she did a promotional ad for my column. She complained to the
Gazette
photographer that the picture he took of me was “too sexy.” I found out later from my friend Tina that Vonnie had the same complaint about her promo photo. Tina looked good and photographed even better. Imagine Whitney Houston with a computer. Tina had star quality. Vonnie scuttled Tina’s ad, saying the budget was blown. Tina didn’t care. She didn’t need the limelight. But we both wondered if little old Vonnie had her own private campaign to make the
Gazette
women writers look like schoolmarms.

Those were the principal members of the Voyage Committee, along with four eager young yups from the business side, who were named Brittany, Courtney, Scott, and Jeremy. I couldn’t tell them apart,
because they all had short blond hair and said yes a lot. They stood in a little covey near the coffee urn.

Promptly at 8:00
A.M
. a ponytailed guy in work boots, blue jeans, and a chambray shirt arrived. “Good morning,” he said with irritating chipperness. “I am your Voyage Captain Jason.”

“I’m getting that sinking feeling already,” I whispered to Georgia. She shut my mouth with a laser glare.

“Before we begin,” chirped Jason, “I have a little gift that symbolizes our Voyage of Discovery.” He pulled out a big cardboard box from under a skirted buffet table. Then he presented each of us, starting with the publisher, with a nylon navy backpack with the Voyage of Discovery ship logo on it. He handed them out reverently, as if they were platinum-plated.

“We don’t want you carrying old baggage on this journey,” Jason said, smiling earnestly. “We want you to make fresh, new discoveries about yourselves and your colleagues. That’s what our backpack with the special ship logo represents.”

“I thought it represents the fact that the paper is totally at sea,” I whispered to Georgia. She kicked me. Hard.

We were sitting around a big dark walnut conference table. The room was done in soothing mauve and gray. Jason spurned the walnut podium. He stood at the head of the table, hands in his jeans pockets. He looked at ease yet in command. The publisher was hanging on to his words as if they were solid gold. Considering what this was costing the
Gazette,
I guess they were.

“As your captain on this voyage, I must warn you.
You’re in for some heavy weather. We’ve done some preliminary research, and the Good Ship
Gazette
is lost in stormy waters. It’s leaking circulation faster than ever before in its history, particularly in the West County suburban corridor, which is the most desirable area for the advertisers. We’re losing women readers and we aren’t bringing in young readers. Our analysis, plus the results of several years of surveys and focus groups, shows that readers feel the paper is lacking in structure and identity and that it is elitist, arrogant, and out of touch with the community.”

Hmm. Maybe Voyage Captain Jason wasn’t all wet after all. So far, I’d agreed with everything he’d said.

“Our internal surveys of the staff were even more disturbing. We found a staff that is distrustful of management and one another. Section heads refuse to assist each other. Staff members are encouraged to dislike their colleagues. This is not a good working atmosphere, people. This is not a sharing and caring environment where creativity can be nurtured. These kinds of conflicts can sink a corporation.”

Way to go, Captain. Everything you said would float my boat.

“It’s going to take a lot of work to get the Good Ship
Gazette
back on course,” he said. “It’s going to take the cooperation of you.” He pointed dramatically at our publisher.

“And you and you,” he said, pointing at the two money men, Tucker and Simpson.

“And you and you and you and . . .” He made sure we all got the point.

“We need the high Cs here—Cooperation and Creativity.
And to help develop these two vital life-enhancing and business-building qualities, we are going to have our first exercise in teamwork. Francesca, what do you think would be a good, fun learning game for
Gazette
people to play? Choose a popular game, now.”

Game? I didn’t play games. Wait a minute, what was that game I used to play with my suburban cousins? It was about buying and selling. Was it Scrabble? No, it was . . .

“Monopoly!” I said brightly. There was an awkward silence. Shit. Bad choice. Some said the
Gazette
already played Monopoly. The city’s two other daily newspapers were dead.

Georgia came to my rescue. “Poker is a good learning game,” she said. “I learned it when I covered city hall, and it taught me everything I needed to know about people.”

It was just the right thing to say. “I heard the mayor lost his shirt playing with you,” Tucker said, smiling.

“Not true, it wasn’t strip poker,” said Georgia, and everyone laughed. I hoped my Monopoly remark was forgotten.

“Those are good games,” said Jason, sounding like he was talking to a gifted kindergarten class. “But I was thinking of something a little more basic. A way of going back to our beginnings, when we first learned to play.” He reached again under the table skirt and pulled out a giant box of . . . Tinkertoys.

“I’m going to divide you into teams of four. Each team will build something that represents their concept of the
Gazette.
You’ll have twenty minutes. Sit
on the floor now. We need to start building from the ground up. I realize some of you must be thinking ‘What does that silly man have in mind? These are kids’ toys!’”

I was thinking something similar, only not so clean.

“I promise you. This only looks like a childish exercise. It is actually a childlike activity. That is an important difference. This is the best way I know to teach you teamwork,” Jason said.

“I swear to God, Lyle, we actually sat on a conference room floor and played with Tinkertoys for two hours yesterday. What was that idiot thinking?”

“Which idiot?” asked Lyle.

“Good question. I meant Voyage Captain Jason, but the publisher sat there and lapped up that foolishness. That’s one emperor who doesn’t realize he’s running around naked.”

Naked. Yes. I was distracted by the hunky young man who ran past us in Tower Grove Park, with teeny shorts and tons of muscles. I’d always loved St. Louis’s fall days, and this one was particularly beautiful, even without the nearly naked jogger. Most of the trees still had their leaves, and this year they were a blaze of fiery red and gold. Tower Grove was a nineteenth-century Victorian walking park, a perfect place for lovers to stroll and talk on a warm Sunday afternoon. We passed the lily ponds, paused to watch a giggling bride and groom pose for pictures near the fake Roman ruins, and then walked up to a little gazebo with a roof like a Chinese pagoda.

And all the while we sampled this sun-drenched beauty, I griped about the Voyage Committee. It was one reason I’d agreed to see Lyle when he called. I missed talking to him after I flounced out of his place last Saturday. He was so smart, and he listened.

“I can see why you’re discouraged,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like this group is going to solve the
Gazettes
problems. And the paper does have problems. Do you know my students call it News Lite, because they don’t think it has anything worth read-mg?

“No, I didn’t. I suspect the paper will be even emptier when this committee gets through with it. This is going to be a long voyage,” I said with a sigh. “And besides these Voyage Committee meetings, I still have to write my column and do that special feature on Sydney Vander Venter. And if I write about Sydney, I have to go to one of my least favorite areas in St. Louis—Ladue.”

“Ladue is an attractive older suburb,” Lyle replied. He wasn’t from St. Louis, so he didn’t have my built-in attitude. “All those big trees and big houses.”

“And small-minded people,” I said.

“Oh, come on. Not everyone in Ladue is a snob. Don’t you have some friends who live there?”

“Yeah, I like them. But I still can’t stand the place.”

“Why?”

“I hate the rich.”

“You do not. I’m rich. You don’t hate me.” No. But right now, I didn’t exactly like him, either. When he stood there and smiled like that, I wanted
to slap him. I was in a foul mood after spending yesterday on that Voyage Committee.

“Come on, tell me why you hate the place,” Lyle said, and punctuated his taunt by kissing me on the nose. I swatted him away, like a pesky fly.

“It’s insular. It’s stupid. It’s smug. There’s a whole Ladue attitude. They think they can run the city and do whatever they want and they don’t have to follow the rules like the rest of us.”

“Those are prejudices,” Lyle said.

“Based on fact. Remember when I did that story on the county health department’s vector control service—we call it Rat Control in the city? Well, a woman called up and asked what she could do about the night squirrels. Vector control said they didn’t know what night squirrels were.

“ ‘My gardener told me about them,’ the Ladue woman said. ‘They only come out at night. They look like squirrels with long skinny tails.’

“ ‘Those are rats, ma’am,’ said vector control.

“ ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘We don’t have rats. We live in Ladue.’”

“A funny story, I admit,” Lyle said. “But still not enough evidence. Why don’t you start with some research on Ladue?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go to the downtown library tomorrow and find the facts to back me up.”

“At least you’ll know why you hate the place.”

S
ome barflies get thirsty at the whiff of an old-time bar. There’s something about the smell of stale beer and Pine-Sol, and I do feel at home in a saloon. But I lust for libraries. They were my home away from home. My parents argued a lot. I would sneak off to the library and hide out there in the silence with my peaceful books. I liked the suburban library with the blond bookcases, the big glass windows, and that peculiar greenish aquarium light. The librarians wouldn’t let anyone talk to me or hurt me. I’d sit there, feeling safe and protected, hoping my parents would quit fighting by the time I got home. If the bedroom door was locked and I heard their bed-springs squeaking, I knew they were making up and everything would be fine in the morning. If they were still arguing, I would sneak upstairs to my room, shut the door, and read my books on my bed until I finally fell asleep. I’m surprised my ribs didn’t cave in, sleeping on some of those fat tomes.