Blue Suede

After I finished eating my bacon and eggs, I sat quietly in my booth at the Arcadia, staring at the undissolved pieces of Cremora swirling around in my coffee cup. The circular motion reminded me of the Elvis Diaries story--bits and pieces of disconnected information swirling around in my head. Keltar Pertman, Reverend Dickerson, strange letters from Germans . . . I couldn't make any sense of it. It made me wonder if I was losing my edge--that sixth sense that a good reporter has that lets him know in an instant that two dimes and a nickel add up to a quarter.
       Oh, I'd had the edge, for sure. I'd experienced that special feeling that Wilcox had talked about--the feeling that comes with landing the big story.
       I remember the excitement of breaking the Dubrowski political scandal a few years back--meeting with my source in a darkened parking garage; him exhorting me to "Follow the money! Follow the money! " I did follow the money. Unfortunately it led right to my source. I'll never forget seeing him after the trial when he said to me, "Did I really tell you to follow the money? Sheeesh! What must I have been thinking?"
       There's a certain electricity working for a daily metropolitan newspaper, all right. I started to think back to my first years at the Globe. Those were exciting times--old Mr. Feeny running in, shouting, "Stop the presses! " Of course, Mr. Feeny didn't actually Quote 1

work for the newspaper, so we'd have to call security to come throw him out. But it was still exciting.
       Or the unforgettable sound of 25 typewriters blazing away--all writing retractions.
       That's where I got my start at the newspaper--Corrections and Amplifications. I was fresh out of J-school--still green behind the ears--but working C&A, as we used to call it, was big-time journalism to me. Oh, it's true a lot of it was pretty mundane stuff--running corrections on things like misspelled names, recipes that called for a cup of sugar instead of a cup of flour, and ads that had Rolls Royces selling for a nickel--that kind of thing. But there were those magic moments like Billy Breen running breathlessly into the office yelling, "Drop everything! The guys at the Metro Desk completely screwed up the Land Use Control Board story." Or the thrill of going to the gigantic press room and watching the presses roll. Picking up the freshly-printed papers and wondering what stories we'd have to correct the next day. Those were special times.
       I was jolted out of my nostalgic reverie by the sound of Ethel shouting an order.
       "Regis Philbin on a trampoline! Hang Ten! "
       I checked my watch. It was almost eleven o'clock. I was about ready to pay my check, head home, and get some shut-eye, when from behind me came a voice from my past.
       "Jeff? Is that you?"
       That voice! It couldn't be. I turned around and sure enough, there she stood, as beautiful as ever--Ginger Alexander, the woman who had been responsible for both the best and worst moments in my life. After she walked out on me, I spent years trying to put my life back together like it was a jigsaw puzzle.I had finished the border and the sky, and part of the boats in the harbor, and I was just getting ready to work on that little row of shacks--but there she stood. How long had it been since I'd set eyes on her? Three years, six months, two weeks, five days, and 56 minutes? Something like that. I guess I should hate her, but just looking at her made my heart melt like a pair of wax lips on a radiator.
       "Ginger. It's been a long time."
       "Yeah, I guess it has," she said awkwardly.
       "Are you back in town to stay?" I asked. "Wait, come on and join me. I'm still drinking coffee."
       Ginger nodded and slid into the seat across from me.
       Yeah, she looked great, all right, and that's hard to do when there's a red and blue neon sign right behind you flashing the words "Cheap Eats" on and off at 10-second intervals.
       "How have you been doing?" she asked.
       "Great," I lied.
       "I read your article about the guy with all those personalities."
       "Oh, right--Earl Buskin."
       "That's him. It was amazing how someone could have eight different personalities yet all of them be members of the Durwood Kirby Fan Club."
       "Yeah, it's a small world."
       Just then Ethel showed up to take her order.
       "I highly recommend the Sonny Bono," I said.
       "Huh?" Ginger said.
       "Never mind."
       Ginger ordered a hamburger and french fries which Ethel translated into something to do with Broderick Crawford. I had more coffee.
       We talked, and for a while, it seemed like old times.

       Ginger and I had been high school sweethearts. We both went to Lamar High--the toughest school in town, and I don't mean academically. There was so much violence that we used to start off each morning with a moment of stunned silence. Even lunch was dangerous. The cafeteria was the kind of place where the phrase "Leggo my Eggo" could lead to gunplay.
       We both worked on the school newspaper--she was the editor and I sold advertising. I guess the paper was our sanctuary from the gangs and violence.
       It was Ginger who encouraged me to try my hand at writing and actually gave me my first assignment--an interview with Sheldon Spanarkel, the winner of the science fair. Sheldon was a boy genius. He took first place at the fair by performing the first successful artichoke heart transplant.
       Ginger and I kind of lost touch during college. She went away to Yale, and I stayed home and went to Memphis State. She made straight A's and I--well, let me put it this way--I'm the only person I know of whose college transcript has expletives deleted.
       Anyway, Ginger came back to Memphis after college. I was working at the Globe in C&A, when I heard she'd landed a job as a reporter. We had a warm reunion and started seeing each other again. Those were the happy years. We moved in together. She got me a start as a reporter. We both loved our jobs. Our life together was idyllic.
       Then one day I made the biggest mistake of my life. I introduced her to Johnny Bombasio, a writer friend of mine. Within a week the two of them had run away together. I'll never forget the day I came home and found the note stuck to the refrigerator:

THINGS TO DO TODAY
1. Pick up milk and Pop Tarts at groc. store.
2. Pay cable tv bill.
3. Drop yellow jodhpurs at dry cleaners.
4. Run away with Johnny Bombasio.

       I was crushed. Not only had she run away with Johnny, but I had already picked up the milk and Pop Tarts on my way home. I dropped the sack to the kitchen floor, and tears began rolling down my cheeks and falling into the pool of 2% milk that was forming next to the ruptured container.
       Their romance wasn't to last, though. I heard from friends that the relationship soured quickly. They began to fight. Johnny turned to liquor. Some claim that Ginger Quote 2 drove him to drink--actually keeping the engine running while he ran into the package store.
       Johnny's drinking began to affect his work. In six months Johnny went from wanting to write the Great American Novel to wanting to read the Great American Novel to wanting to watch the movie based on the Great American Novel to wanting to read the capsule description in TV Guide of the movie based on the Great American Novel. Alcohol can do that to you. The really sad part is that he stayed too drunk to do any of those things.
       Of course, they finally broke up. Ginger moved out of town. One day, Johnny showed up on my doorstep in a drunken stupor, weeping and begging my forgiveness.
       Well, sap that I am, I forgave him. I guess I felt a certain kinship with him in that Ginger had managed to wreck both our lives.
       I tried my best to help Johnny. I stuck my neck out to get him my old job in Corrections and Amplifications on the condition that he give up alcohol. He did okay at first, but then the drinking started again. He began writing corrections for nonexistent errors. He wrote that we had inadvertently referred to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as "Shemp."
       Then he started missing work. At first he'd just call in sick--a cold or the flu. But it got to where he was doing that so much, he would try variations--he called in homesick--then carsick. Once he called in schizophrenic--phoned twice, of course. Eventually he abandoned illnesses altogether, calling in with a variety of conditions: dumb, nostalgic, winsome, tacky . . . One time he even had the nerve to call in and say he couldn't come to work because he was feeling Russian! Needless to say, they finally fired him. He had the last laugh, though; he called in the next day to say that he couldn't come to work because he was feeling unemployed.
       Well, that was the last straw. I washed my hands of him after that. The last I heard his mind had completely snapped. Word had it that he was suffering from both agoraphobia and claustrophobia and was constantly running in and out of the house.

       "Have you heard anything about . . . Johnny?" I asked Ginger. I knew I shouldn't bring up his name. It was kind of cruel, but I guess I hadn't completely forgiven her.
       "Yes," she said, obviously a little taken aback that I would mention him.
       "He's in pretty bad shape," she said. Tears began welling in her eyes.
       "Look, you don't have to . . ."
       "No, it's okay," she said, regaining her composure. "I ran into his mother at the supermarket last week. She told me that Johnny had gone crazy; that he'd gotten a VCR and started renting movies."
       "What's crazy about that?"
       "It's how he does it. He uses his remote control to watch the movies one frame at a time. She said it took him a month-and-a-half to get through Caddyshack."
       "God, that's awful."
       "His mother's scared to death he'll get his hands on Lawrence of Arabia."
       "Yep," I said. "That would take him well into next year."
       Ginger dabbed at her eyes with her napkin.
       "It's been hell on his mother," she said.
       "Not to mention his tape heads," I added.

       We chatted a while longer. Finally she looked at her watch and said she had to go. She got up, said goodbye, and started to leave.
       I wanted to call out. I wanted to tell her to stop. I wanted to run after her. But all I could do was sit in that booth, stopped by my foolish pride.