Page 2 of Hello, Summer
“What’s wrong? Did somebody die?”
Conley handed her the phone.
“Jesus Hopscotching Christ,” Tiana muttered. “Is this your sister’s idea of a joke?”
“Grayson is incapable of joking,” Conley said. “She lacks a humor chromosome.”
“You think it’s true?” Tiana asked. “AboutIntelligentsia? I mean, if it were true, you would have heard something, right? Maybe it’s just a rumor.”
“Maybe.”
“You should call that guy, the editor, what’s his name?”
“Fred Ward.” She pulled up the list of recent callers, but there was nothing from Fred Ward, nor were there any calls with a D.C. prefix.
“Conley! You need to cut the damn cake!” called one of the sportswriters.
“Yeah,” another voice chimed in. “Let’s get this party started. I got a story to file.”
She looked up. So many faces watching hers. She swallowed hard, fighting back against a wave of nausea swelling up from her gut, the champagne sour in her mouth.
“Just do it,” Tia whispered.
Roger was holding out the pica pole, which was tied with a faded red ribbon. The pica pole was a quaint relic from another era, from the Marietta Street days, back when newspapers were physically laid out on drafting tables in the downtown composing room, instead of digitally designed in this gleaming smoked-glass box in a suburban office park.
Conley took the stiff aluminum ruler and made a horizontal slash through the gooey white frosting, then another vertical slash, dividing the cake into quadrants. She handed the pole back to her editor. “You do the rest,” she said, forcing a smile. “I can’t eat cake. I’m gluten-free.”
His dark eyes studied her. “Since when?”
“Give me a break,” she said quietly. “Something’s come up. Please?”
“Okay, but see me before you take off. And I mean it.”
While the staff clustered around the table, helping themselves to slices of cake and more champagne, she walked down to the ladies’ room onthe third floor. She locked herself into a stall and reread the story.Suspended publication.What did that mean?
She found Fred Ward’s name in her list of contacts and tapped his number.
The phone rang once before clicking over to his voice mail. His deep, sonorous voice oozed from the phone like an amber stream of cane syrup. “This is Fred Ward, managing editor atIntelligentsia.I can’t come to the phone right now cuz I’m fixin’ to put the paper to bed. Leave me a message, and I’ll eventually get back to you.”
“Fred?” She tried not to sound too panicky. “Hey. It’s Conley Hawkins down in Atlanta.” She gave a shaky laugh. “I just saw the craziest item on the Bloomberg wire, saying you guys are shutting down. Call me, okay?”
She disconnected and waited five minutes. She walked slowly up the stairs to her now-stripped cubicle. The space, in the back row of the newsroom, facing a bank of windows looking out on the continually under-construction interstate, had been home for the past four and a half years. Now, though, her stuff—the books, clip files, the stained coffee mug, even the dozens of lanyards with laminated press credentials from events she’d covered over the years… in short, the detritus of a career—was all packed in cardboard cartons stacked in the back seat of her Subaru.
This day, the one she’d been anticipating since the thrilling email from Fred Ward—subject line: “When can you start?”—had finally arrived. Sarah Conley Hawkins was ready to leave theAJCand Atlanta in the rearview mirror. The question was, where would she be going?
“Hawkins?”
Roger sat down in Butch’s vacant chair. He frowned, his rubbery face arranged in jowly folds, speckled with the gray of his five-o’clock shadow. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” She shrugged. “I suck at goodbyes. Guess I’m gonna miss all you assholes after all.”
“Try again.”
She sighed and showed him the text message from her sister.
He looked up, his wire-rimmed bifocals sliding to the end of his nose. “I take it this is the first you’ve heard?”
Conley nodded.
