Goodbye, Good Night: Thoughts From A Dying Journalist (2) “ah, Kim,” his voice was a bit scratchy and his eyes were drooping. He was ready to go to bed. “The bet was only one hundred. But I owe him for a suit he once bought me when I needed to look like a professional and didn’t’ quite have the means. I never paid him.” Kim One of his passions was the night sky. It could be crystal clear, or it could be a blanket of gray with clouds drifting across it that looked like curdled milk. It could have white, cottony clouds, and a cool breeze, and be absolutely beautiful. Once a week he had a ritual. He would leave his office and go and sit in a place that way far away; a place that was usually busy during the week, but wasn’t very busy on Friday nights. Except one night it wasn’t the only person who was there. He had left his brief case and his notes in his car and come out to sit and watch the sky. The stories that day hadn’t been terribly upsetting, except for the usual ones that he knew too well and that seemed somehow never to end. He saw a woman sitting on the bench and stepped back a little in surprise. But he caught her eye at first and somehow it as okay. “Do you mind if I sit here?” he asked in his quiet way. “I usually come here and watch the stars. I won’t bother you.” “I don’t mind if you sit here,” said the woman. “In fact, I’ve no plans tonight. I’m sorry,” she said, a sudden tear in her eye, “I’ve just been dumped by my boyfriend. Don’t mind me.” “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “If you want to remain alone with your thoughts.” “Oh, no, please,” she almost insisted. “I’ve been left alone too many times with my thoughts.” The woman, he noticed, was dressed in a lavender suit and seemed out of place in this locale. “My name is Kimberly Robins,” she said, putting out her hand. Peggy Today he didn’t feel so good. It was just one of those days. The drugs made him curl up in bed and sleep. He tried to think of something to do. Time was probably running out for him. He wasn’t sure why God didn’t just take him. Maybe he had to cover one more story? Maybe he was the story, this time. His parents were dead. His sister, she was alive, a few years younger than him. She had been a good sister. They were close. She hadn’t traipsed all the way across the country to do something wild. She stayed on the east coast and married. But she had her own life and her own plans; her own dreams. She wrote children’s’ books for a living and she was a darn good writer. She wrote about princes and princesses, and castles, kings, queens, and lovely things like peaceful lakes and rolling landscapes. Her little cottage sat in the leafy nook of a Vermont hill side and God knew she took her inspiration from it. “You’re out digging around for solutions to the world’s problems,” she told him once over lunch when he came to give a series of lectures on the state of journalism in the country today. “And me. Well, I show people how to escape from them.” Peggy was a good girl. She had that little suburban dream of a house and picket fence and she lived a sometimes idyllic life, picking up the paper sometimes to see his picture or some article or some such thing he had said or done staring out at her over her book and her pen and her life, and her latest series of stories. Maybe he was waiting for her to arrive. Then he could exit stage left, as it were. He could go peacefully He might feel better. Tomorrow, if he breathed through one more night, he would call her. No, not tomorrow. He moved on his side. It seemed to take his energy from him and he looked up to see his wife standing by him. “Go,” he rasped quietly, his eyes shining with the undeniable fervor of his request. Go call Peggy and ask her to come. Tell her we’ll pay the flight if she can’t.” His words were necessarily short. Kim loved him. She knew that face and she knew that this time there was no arguing with him. She expressed her opinion often enough during their marriage, sometimes to the detriment of both of them, but today, she knew not to do that. She knew he was right. He lay back on his pillows. You could hear the electric hum of the oxygen tank. He eased himself slowly onto one side. NO, that was painful; a sudden intake of breath, one of the precious few breaths he had led made him cough; it was a hard productive cough; it started down inside him and came up through his chest into his head. He was simply spent. The cough and the movement seemed to disturb Kate, the kitten. His kitten usually slept under his bed. She had always slept under his bed. A rowdy, gentle, quiet kitten. This wasn’t Candy. Candy was the big boss the one who would watch him go. Kate, that was this kitten. Kate would just quietly be there. Kate was still kind of little; she was still having trouble climbing and the rails and the tube prevented her a bit. The anti nausea medication was now almost completely administered; if he got dizzy it was from the drug and not the sickness itself. Kate walked up to the edge of the bed, looking up at the little rungs, putting her paws up, wanting him. He didn’t say anything; he only reached over with one hand, there was a pain somewhere, it was not as distinct as all the other pains, sort of blended into the haze, but his hand closed on the edge of skin on her neck. He would help her. “Kate,” he said her name quietly. “Kate, my Kate. You want nothing; demand nothing. You just want what I can’t give you for long.” She settled down beside him; she let him touch her orange head, her dry, soft nose. His hand rested on her head. She curled up beside him, someone arranged one of the rubber tubing so it would not tangle around the kitten. He turned his head, gave his wife a solemn look; a look that said through the drugs and the sickness, do not take this away from me. Life and health are leaving. Leave something tangible. He rested his hand on the small cat’s fir. “I called her,” Kim said tentatively, watching his interaction with Kate and holding back as if she might be interrupting a reverent experience in a church service. His fingers traced her fir; her head. She purred. “She’s on the red Eye tonight.” Any Place But Where I’ve Been No one could ever claim that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The way he got his money was from hard work. Real work. Real hard, scrabbling work; looking about him for stories, but never making them up. What he couldn’t make up was his second marriage. His second marriage was Kim Robins. Somehow the quiet meeting under the night sky. Somehow when they shook hands, they didn’t say anything after that. They only sat there and Kim found herself looking up at the quiet, velvety black sky. Somehow it was reassuring, quiet, the city lights winking persistently in the dark. “So do you want to talk about your boyfriend?” he asked. It was the reporter’s curiosity; the little part of him that just had to know what happened. Her eyes were liquid. “The usual,” she said. “What happened to you?” That got no response. He sat patiently. He had, it seemed, all the time in the world tonight. The office would call him to report that some horrible thing had happened and he must get back. “Get back?” he’d say in that soft, authoritative way he had with assistants. “No, no.” And when he said no, no, he usually meant it. “He left me for a better job,” was all she said. “I see.” She looked at him quizzically. “You look familiar. You’re not…” “shhh,” he said dramatically, putting his finger to his lips. “Oh, my,” she gasped, recognition donning. “You’re only a well known anchor.” “And you?” “I work for The Star.” I think, he said to himself, looking away from her, that you are the star. “What’s your Byline?” “Yu wouldn’t recognize it. Too small.’ “I don’t need to recognize it,” he said defending his right to know. “I just need to know it.” “I’m the food reporter,” she said. “My boyfriend was a chef. No, I’m sorry. Is a chef. He left to go work at some new vegetarian place in California.” “Ah,” said the smooth voiced man. “Yes. It’s a strange country, California.” “Perhaps. Andréa was stranger, though. Sort of fancies himself a French chef.” “And you, Kim?” “I get to work on a small salary writing the food column for the city; for the Star.” “Hmmm.” They both fell quiet. She didn’t really want to talk about it. He seemed to be clenching his hands for something that wasn’t there. “Can I help?” she asked, looking at his hands. “No.” What he was looking for, was a cigarette. He came to his senses and shook his head. “Kim. Don’t let the gossip columnists see this. Would you like to get coffee?” “Sure. What a show down. French chef abandons woman who has dinner with hot TV personality.” An easy laugh; a smile. He got up and got his keys. “yes, well,” and here he smiled again, “I left the chauffeur at home. I shall have to drive you. Where to, Madame?” “Anyplace but where I’ve been.” space Is big Where’d they went was no place like she had ever been. A whirlwind courtship and they were married. But somehow they knew it was right. Life could turn on a meeting under a night sky. She kept her job working as food reporter for the Star and that’s where she met Liz. Is who had made coffee and the smell of which had made him sick. Liz was another reporter for tee Star. Liz was a quiet girl; but Kim was the woman he loved; deeply, thoroughly, unequivocally; the woman who sat with him now. “Why don’t you go to sleep,” she told him. “All is well my love.” “Kim,” he said quietly. “Read to me from our book; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” She turned to the night stand. She saw his face. Tonight he looked sick and in pain. She pushed the button on his morphine injection. “Space is big. Really big.” Escape One of their other pastimes was finding really good jazz bands. They found a few of them at coffee houses and got lost in the crowd of backpacks and books an newspapers and homeless guys who lived somewhere and managed to get along. But what he really liked was the sound of organs and bass and drums. There way something comforting about it; something that told a story. Love, loss, hate, renewal, resurrection. Sometimes his favorite moment was just sitting in the cool air listening to the man who put his fingers over the keyboard like apron; quiet, calm hands, and when they did that, he, the top TV anchor, could escape. Tonight he would listen. It would help. Thoughts That Never Finished Babies could make you do things; things like give up one habit and start another one. If he wanted to know anything, he’d look it up in a book. Goodbye Good Night A blue haze, a black sky, a heavy heart, and a coffin were all there was on that day to wish him well. Then suddenly, the woman who had loved him for who he was bent and kissed the coffin top before they lowered it into the ground. He had been good to her and she would miss him. When she turned around she saw dozens of people standing at a distance, respectfully holding flowers. A sign proclaimed: Goodbye, Good Night.
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Copyright © 2009 Shelley J Alongi |