NaNo Part 12 (and the final, maybe) (edit: nope, needs one more)
If I don't break the lj interface, I'm posting the last 14,000 words at once. I do not promise this will work.
Previous installments:
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six Part Seven Part Eight Part Nine Part Ten Part Eleven
1966 -- The Next Step Forward
“Another letter,” Sally said one night when she came home from work. She put the envelope in my line of sight, to the left of my typewriter. “They’re getting more frequent.”
“Great,” I muttered and stared at the envelope, shell pink with Billie’s spider-light script making the ‘J’ in my first name almost unreadable. “Stick it away,” I said. “I don’t want it.”
“I could throw it out,” Sally offered. She always offered.
“No,” I said. “Just stick it in the box by my bed.”
“I don’t get you,” Sally told me as she picked up the letter again. “You won’t read them, but you won’t toss them. You can’t just keep them around. It’s morbid.”
“Leave it,” I replied, and I heard her sigh as she walked to my bedroom.
We split the rent on a smallish two-bedroom with fresh paint and surprisingly roomy closets. Sally worked in the art department of an ad agency, drawing soda and airplanes and other round, shiny things that always looked too flat on paper. I was getting by publishing science fiction stories under J. Schwartz. Sometimes I got fan mail. People assume I was male. I couldn’t find the energy to correct anyone. I wrote three stories a week because the silence in the apartment nearly killed me unless the typewriter was clattering.
“Dinner?” Sally asked from the kitchen.
“The roast should be ready in another ten minutes,” I called in return. “You can check it now if you want.”
“Nah, ten minutes gives me time to make a drink,” Sally replied. I listened to the bottles rattle, the sound of ice dropping into glasses, the swishing clink of Sally stirring up an old fashioned. She carried out one for me, put it where the letter had been. “How’s it going?” she asked every night. I could tell from her face she kept hoping I’d talk about myself.
“I wrote something that wasn’t science fiction,” I told her. “It’s really short, so no one will probably want it, but I liked it.”
“Can I see it?”
I shuffled through the stack of typed pages to my right, found the four pages I’d written in a sudden rush of inspiration I couldn’t pin on anything. I handed them to her, sipped my drink, wrote three more lines about two people stranded on Mars because their rocket ship had lost a booster rocket. Wendy’s insistence on research had stuck with me, made my science fiction more research-based than most.
“This is lovely,” Sally said after a few minutes. She flipped back two pages, reread something that made her smile. “Jules-”
“Julie,” I corrected.
Sally gave me the same exasperated look she’d been giving me for nearly ten months. “Whatever,” she countered. “This is damn near romantic.”
“There was a call for it,” I told her. “In the back of one of my magazines.”
“Think you could pad it out?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
She put the pages down, smoothed the edges. “It reminds me of when you first met Billie,” she said quietly, hesitance giving away how close she knew she was to hitting a sore spot. “There’s a great tension to it.”
“Tension’s good,” I replied. I took another sip of my drink. “It’s what keeps people reading.”
Sally sighed, reached back and undid her hair so it fell down her back. “You have to talk about her sometime,” she told me. She pushed every week or so.
“Not yet,” I told her like I always did. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Admit you’re made,” Sally said.
“I’ve done that. You’ve heard me.”
Sally rolled her eyes. “Fine. Then admit something else. Admit that part of you wants to go back and tell her you’re sorry. Say that you understand on a level.”
“Stop it,” I told her. “I don’t want to do this.”
She eyed me, looking ready to push further than she had previously. “Fine,” she finally said and sighed. She stood up, picked up her drink, gave me a look that called me stupid. “But keeping it bottled up is going to make it worse, you know.”
“I’ve got to write,” I told her.
Sally walked to the other side of the living room, clicked on the television, left it to warm up while she went back into the kitchen. I heard her get down plates, open the drawer for forks. I finished the paragraph I was writing, stood up, walked into the kitchen in time for her to hand me a plate.
“Don’t worry so much,” I told her. “I’ve got it.”
“You’re my friend,” Sally said. “I’m supposed to worry.”
“I’m a grown woman, Sal. You can’t keep waiting for me to crack.”
“You’re going to,” she predicted, pointing at me. “Eventually, you have to snap.”
I leaned against the counter, ate a bite of roast, speared a piece of carrot, watched Sally walk away, back to the living room, listened to the springs squeak in the couch as she sat down. She didn’t know how often I thought about Billie, how often I stayed up until three or four in the morning, staring at the ceiling in my bedroom and thinking about everything that was said, everything that was done. Everything I changed in my head. I couldn’t tell her I changed the story in my head, made it about Billie saving me rather than being too scared to do what was right. She’d hate me, I thought. Or, at least, she’d think I’d cracked.
We finished the night in silence. Sally watching a program then mending a pair of socks while I finished the story of the stranded astronauts, had them make it home because the aliens of the world wanted them away, made them swear not to come back. I used a paper clip to hold the whole story together, reached into the bottom drawer of my slightly worn desk for an envelope, and I shoved the story inside. I was sending it to one of my usual magazines. They printed me almost monthly. Had mentioned, in letters, wanting to make me a regular contributor, I was so popular.
“I’m going to bed,” Sally said. She stood up, stretched, looked like she was going to walk over and hug me.
“Goodnight,” I said before she could do it. I concentrated on addressing the envelope, finding the right stamps from the loose pile in the middle, shallow drawer of my desk. Sally washed her face, changed clothes, walked into her bedroom. I only looked up again when the door clicked shut.
I was of the world, I thought, but not quite in it. All my attempts to make friends, to socialize, had faded away. I stayed home and wrote, went out for groceries, came home again. I was reading a book a week, the newspaper front to back, and I never made eye contact on the street. I wanted to lock myself away further, get my own apartment, a studio no bigger than a closet, I thought. Enough space for a bed and a desk. I could write and sleep, which is all I felt like doing most days anyway.
Sally’s door opened. She walked out in her nightgown, a glass in her hand. “I need water,” she told me. She walked to the bathroom, and I listened to her fill the glass. She paused in the threshold of her door, looked at me. The living room light was on, but her bedroom light wasn’t. Half of her body disappeared into the shadows. “You can’t keep doing this,” she said like she’d practiced it. I wondered if she had. “You’ve got a life to live, Julie. Waiting for…whatever you’re waiting for, it’s not life to have.”
“It’s mine,” I told her, and for a moment, I felt my temper rise.
“It’s pathetic,” she countered, and she sounded so sad my temper dropped like a stone. “You’ve lost your fierceness,” she told me. “And I don’t want to think that Billie got it away from you.” She walked into her room, shut the door. I listened to her settle on the bed.
I’m still fierce, I thought. I know I am. I picked up a half-finished story, read a few pages. There was fierceness there, determination and grit. I stood up, walked to Sally’s door, slid the story under.
“Doesn’t count,” she said through the door. “Writing it isn’t living it.”
I considered throwing open the door, demanding she look at me when she said things like that. I walked away instead, into my bedroom, sat on my bed and stared at the box with Billie’s letters. I picked up one, traced the ‘J’ in my first name. I could open them, I thought. I could read her apology, laugh at it, throw the envelopes out of the window and watch them flutter to the ground, land on the fire escape for the neighbors to find.
I laid down in bed, pulled the blanket over myself and let myself drift off.
The next day was Saturday. I left early, a note on the icebox telling Sally I was doing the shopping. I got home in the early afternoon, groceries in both arms. I had to knock on the door with my foot to have Sally let me in. It took nearly a minute to get to the door. She looked completely shocked. “You all right?” I asked and slid past her when she didn’t move from the door. I opened my mouth to ask again, but I’d walked into the living room, saw the stack of shell pink envelopes balanced carefully on the coffee table.
“Julie-” Sally started.
“The eggs were terrible today,” I interrupted. “I’ll have to check back Monday, but I think we have enough-”
“Hell’s bells, Julie!” Sally snapped.
I turned to look at her, adjusted the bugs I was hitting so I wouldn’t drop them. “What?” I asked. “Look, can you take the left bag-”
Sally snatched it out of my hand, stomped to the kitchen. The breeze she made caused the envelopes to topple into a loose pile onto the carpet. I put down the other bag, stacked the envelopes again, put them back onto the table. I picked up my bag, carried it into the kitchen. Sally threw a glass of water on my face when I walked in.
“The hell?” I yelled and sputtered.
Sally took the other bag from me, set it on the counter, splashed another glass of water on my face. “Snap out of it!” she ordered. She put down the glass, crossed her arms, glared at me. “Really, Julie, sleepwalking like this can’t be good for you.”
“Neither is trying to drown me, you cow!” I yelled. “What the hell?”
Sally grinned a little. “There you are,” she said. She tossed me a kitchen towel, watched me wipe my face, squeeze the water from the damp strands of my hair. “I’ve been nice for months,” she told me. “I’ve been trying to give you time to deal with things, but that was absolutely the last straw.”
“What?” I asked. I dabbed at the wet spot down my front, decided it would have to dry on its own. “The letters? What was that, Sally, some sort of sneak attack?”
She rubbed a hand over her face, looked over my shoulder toward the living room. “That was bad timing,” she admitted after a minute. “I went into your room to get a needle and thread from your sewing basket, and they were right there on your bedside table. I started opening them and reading them before I could stop myself.” Her cheeks flushed pink, and she looked away from me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
I opened my mouth, planning to berate her, tell her not to go through my things. “What did they say?” I asked. I was so surprised, I closed my mouth hard enough to make my teeth click.
Sally looked just as shocked. “Are you-”
“No,” I interrupted, “but tell me anyway.”
“Okay.” Sally swallowed, looked at the floor for a moment. “She…” she met my eyes. “She says a lot, Julie, but she doesn’t apologize. She writes like you’ve already sent her a note. Have you?”
“No,” I said. “Of course not. You’re the one who puts out the mail in the mornings.”
“And then I leave you home for the whole day,” Sally pointed out. “I don’t know what you do all day besides write stories and make dinner.”
“I don’t write her,” I said, and my temper flared at the idea. “I might want to, sure, but I don’t. What would I say, Sally?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Because there’s nothing to say. She really writes like everything’s okay, Julie. She thinks you’ll go home soon.”
“She can’t be that deluded,” I replied. “You’re making that up.”
“I can show you,” she offered, and the way she straightened up, ready to walk to the letters scattered on the table made it completely true.
“No,” I said. “I believe you.” I sighed, pulled a piece of wet hair off of my cheek, watched Sally watch me. “Hell,” I muttered. “How didn’t I see it?” I asked. “How could I miss this entire side of her?”
“Love makes you stupid, right?” Sally asked. I nodded, and she gave a knowing smirk. “There you go.” She reached out, pressed a palm to my arm. “She’s not the most horrible person ever, darling. It’s not like she was flaunting her lesser attributes.”
“Lesser attributes,” I snorted, “that’s kind.”
“She’s nuts,” Sally amended. “Does that make it any better to hear?”
I sighed. “No.”
“Although, if my being overly kind about the matter makes you get over it, I’ll do it,” she offered.
“No,” I repeated and waved a hand. “Don’t do that.” I thought for a moment. “Maybe that’s the problem,” I said.
“Hmm?” Sally asked.
“You’ve been outrageously kind about the whole thing,” I told her. “Trying to ask, letting me know you were wondering, but not stepping further if I look like I’m going to flee. Maybe I needed this. Maybe you should have done this months ago.”
“Wish I’d known,” Sally told me.
I closed my eyes, breathed deep, thought about the letters on the coffee table. “No apology?” I asked. “Not even a little one?”
“It’s all pleasantries and plans for when you get home,” Sally told me. “Some bits and pieces about what she’s doing now.”
“Which is?”
“Writing a novel at the moment. She’s working in a different office than when you were together. They chose not to hire her back after-and this is a quote-“the incident with the police.” Because admitting she got Wendy put to death is a bit too real for her.”
“Do you think she’s crazy,” I asked Sally. “I mean actually crazy. Do you think she’s unhinged?”
“I think she’s kidding herself like you were,” Sally said after a moment of thought. “I think you dealt with it by burying yourself in work and keeping things clean around here, and she’s dealing with it by pretending its not there.”
“Hell of an elephant to have in the room,” I said.
“But she’s got so much space since you left,” Sally told me. “And probably no one at all to talk to. She specifically says she won’t call here because she’s afraid I’ll answer, and she doesn’t know what to say to me.”
“I wouldn’t know what to say to her,” I admitted. “I try to picture it, to hear it, and there’s nothing there.”
“Really?” Sally asked. “That’s surprising. You write for a living.”
“I write other people,” I pointed out. “I’ve never scripted myself.”
“I suppose.” Sally looked over my shoulder again. “Don’t read them,” she told me. “Don’t waste your energy on them. Don’t waste it on her.”
“Isn’t that what I have been doing?” I asked. “I can practically hear you say it some nights when you’re quiet.”
“Then don’t waste any more,” Sally said. “ If you don’t want to talk to her and you don’t want to talk about her, then don’t let her into your head. Don’t let her have a place anywhere. Pretend she’s not out there.”
“That’s it?” I asked, surprised. “Pretend Billie Fraction never killed Wendy Ellis?”
Sally shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant, if you want nothing to do with her, then do nothing about her or the idea of her, okay? Let it drift away or lock it down or something. Come back to yourself, Jules.”
I didn’t correct her use of my name. The way she was looking at me, worried and sad and tired, made the weight of Billie in my memories a very heavy rock around my neck. I rubbed at my neck like there was actually a rope there, curved my palm around the side of my neck and felt my pulse flutter. “I’ll try,” I promised. “I’ll see what I can do.”
To Be Concluded
I didn’t see Sally for the rest of the day, didn’t hear from Dinick or Jackie. When I walked down the hall in the late afternoon to stretch my legs, half the people who looked at me did it with suspicion.
“The air’s up,” I told Marla when I got back, feeling a prickle up my spine. “It’s all over the building.”
“You look ruffled,” she told me. “Everything okay?”
“I think people think I’m defecting from Mallory and Sandy’s idea,” I said. “The looks I got, it reminds me of Annie.”
“Annie?” Marla asked.
“She ratted us once,” I said. “It’s best not to mention her around Sally. She was Sally’s Sidekick.
“Oh,” Marla’s lips thinned when she pressed them together. “You think people think you’re being obstinate to be obstinate?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know. But that’s what it feels like.”
“If anyone asks, don’t say anything,” Marla advised. “Tell them you’ve heard the rumors, too.”
“I feel bad,” I admitted, “laying all of this on Sally.”
“She’ll be fine,” Marla said with a decisive edge in her tone. “She knows what she’s doing. You’ve said so.”
“I suppose,” I agreed. Marla gave me a dark look, and I gave myself a shake like a dog coming out of the water. “I don’t doubt her tenacity or determination,” I explained, and Marla’s glare subsided slightly. “I just don’t like the idea of her up there facing off with Mallory and Sandy when all we have is a half-cocked plan and no one but us signed up.”
“Isn’t that how comics stayed around?” Marla asked. “Couple of people, a half-cocked plan?”
I had to nod at that. “Sure, but still. It’s been a while since we’ve needed to act like revolutionaries.”
Marla glanced at the clock. “Lucky it’s only an hour until the doors close. Mallory and Sandy never stay past five. Sally will get out of there soon enough.” She reached into her bottom desk drawer, handed me a stack of files. “And while you’re waiting and worried that you’re not doing enough, here’s a stack of confidential files for you.”
I looked at the stack, nearly two inches thick. “Non-contracted writers, I presume?”
“Some of them, yes. Others are non-exclusive.”
“Wouldn’t that put the screws in them,” I mused. “To have to share the talent.”
“Get into your office with those,” Marla said with a shooing motion. “I can carry them around without anyone raising an eyebrow, but you never carry files.”
“Going, going,” I said, and I shut my office door behind me. I dropped the files into the middle of my desk, sat in my chair, stared at the pile. I knew a few of the non-contract writers, the people who were brought in and out as other writers got too busy or bowed out of a contract renewal. They wrote fast, and they could usually pull together a book in a week. The writing quality varied. Did I want fast? Did I want talented? Could I get both?
I was halfway down the stack, two piles on either side-contact or not contact-when I heard Marla greet someone in the front office. I mixed the files into a single pile again, threw them on the corner of my desk with the rest of the files I hadn’t put back into place. Marla knocked on the door a moment later, stuck her head in and announced Mallory and Sandy.
They walked in, sat on the loveseat. Sandy looked just as angry as she had that morning. Mallory looked ready to fight down a bear. They had something, I thought. Or they thought they did. I wondered which one it was.
“Sally La Rocca says you had no knowledge of her meeting this morning,” Sandy said. “She says she’s trying to start her own company and that she tried to convince you, but you turned her down, said you were loyal to us.”
I was tempted to take the easy way, say it was true, save my skin from whatever Sandy and Mallory were about to do to me. “What’s happening to Sally?” I asked.
“Her contract’s terminated,” Mallory said, sounding like she was spitting nails. “She’s fired as of five o’clock.”
“Wasn’t there a non-compete clause in her contract?” I asked. “Something to stop her from doing this sort of thing?”
“No,” Mallory’s face pinched. “We brought her in early. We didn’t see the need for one, and it slipped our minds during renewal.”
Lucky Sally, I thought. They’d remembered mine during my third year. For as long as my contract was in play, I wasn’t allowed to do any work for anyone except the two of them. I’d double-checked my contract to be sure, and it was on the third page, big as day.
“Why fire her?” I asked. “You could sue her for breach, couldn’t you?”
“We’d rather keep this quiet,” Mallory said, and I realized suddenly that they weren’t in my office to call me out. They were there to negotiate. They knew I was involved, at what level they didn’t know, but they knew Sally and I were working together.
“You want my silence,” I said. “You want to know what it’s going to take to tell people I had no part in it. That I was a poor little pawn in the game.”
Mallory said nothing, but Sandy spoke. “Basically,” she said. “What do you want?”
“Reinstate Sally.”
“No,” Sandy said.
“Tell Billie to get stuffed.”
“No,” Sandy said.
I put my arms behind my head, leaned back in my chair. “Well, that’s that then, isn’t it?” I watched them look at one another, felt a wicked flash shine up my spine. “Question.”
They looked at me like I was about to jump across the narrow space between our knees and rip out their throats. I felt like I could. “Yes?” Mallory prompted after a moment. Her eyes widened as I grinned. I probably looked feral, I figured.
“You’re not suing Sally when you’re completely in the right and could take her for every cent and ruin her name to boot. Why not?” I felt my grin widen. I dropped my arms from behind my head, crossed them in front of me, tucked them under my breasts. “She’ll tell,” I said, and it all snapped into place. “You try to sue her, she’ll tell the judge why, say it’s because the two of you hired Billie Fraction, broke your own code. It’ll be all over the public record, all over the public. Any good publicity you get for giving Billie Fraction a second chance will get completely ruined by Sally getting up and telling the truth.”
“It’s not the truth,” Mallory said. “It’s a handy lie she’ll use to try to get out of trouble with us.”
“Sure,” I said. “And I’ve got a bridge I can sell you.” I stood up, stretched, watched them tense up when I dropped my arms to my sides, popped my neck. “You want my silence?” I asked. “You want my name out of this?”
“Yes.” Mallory said. “What can we do?”
“Get out of my office,” I told her. I sneered at both of them. “Bounce.”
“You’ll leave it be, then?” Mallory asked. Hope flickered across her face.
I shook my head. “Not even a little,” I said. “I’ll honor my contract to the letter. No competition, nothing even smelling of trying to undermine you.”
“But?” Sandy asked, eyes flashing, ready to take me down if she needed.
“But,” I said, and I let the word hang in the air. “That’ll leave me here, working for you, not competing and being so brutally, utterly honest everyone in this building will know every sordid detail of what you’ve shunned to get Billie Fraction in the door. They’ll know you sold out everything you believed in because it’s going to make you a buck.”
“Business is about making money, Julie,” Sandy snapped. “No one in this building thinks different.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “But there’s business, and there’s business without scruples. You know what makes bad business, Sandy? Bad people. People willing to say that they’re going to run things a certain way and then shit all over it because they might get a little bit famous. People like you.”
She was out of her seat then, coming up on me. I stared her down; six inches taller, and I stopped her a foot from my nose. “You can’t badmouth the company,” she hissed. “It violates confidentiality.”
“Not in the building,” I replied. “Bylaws of the company, Sandy. Sure you remember them.” I looked away from her, dismissed her by turning my shoulder told her, looked at Mallory. “You remember too, right Mallory? Number seven?”
Mallory looked like she’d been slapped in the face. “Seven?”
“Marla!” I barked, and Marla opened the door so quickly I knew she’d been listening in. “Grab the bylaws, will you? Should be under ‘B’.”
“Just a moment,” she chirped, and I could see that she knew what I was doing. She knew number seven, too. Lucky seven, Mallory and Sandy had called it more than once. Because it gave the best law in the world.
“Got it,” Marla said. She looked at my expectantly. “Need a copy?”
“Read number seven,” I told her. “We just need a brief refresher.”
She flipped pages, trailed a finger down until she found number seven. “All parties contracted with Perpetual Comics understand-”
“Quiet,” Mallory interrupted. “We know it.”
“Cram it,” I snapped. “Continue, Marla,” I said sweetly, watching Mallory and Sandy go ashen.
“That confidentiality is a byproduct of all good business,” Marla continued like she hadn’t been cut off. “But it is also important to acknowledge the rights of this great country; the rights that won us the chance to be a business of legitimate means that will become a great business. From this day in,” she paused. “Do you need the date?” she asked, a bland expression on her face.
“No, thanks,” I told her. “It happened before my contract was signed, and we all know that.”
“All right.” Marla found her place again. “From this day in,” she repeated, “the first amendment will be followed to both the letter and spirit of the law. While all employees of Perpetual Comics will be expected to sign confidentially agreements regarding their work to persons outside of Perpetual Comics, employees will always be allowed to be honest and-if needed-harsh in their criticism of Perpetual Comics or any of its business practices.” Marla paused again. “I’ve got two more paragraphs.”
“Do they change the meaning of the first?” I asked.
Marla skimmed them. “No.”
“Didn’t think so. Thank you, Marla. Leave the door open.” I raised my eyebrows at Mallory and Sandy. “Going to change the bylaws?” I asked. “Explain that some parts of the first amendment are more important than others? That some of us animals are more equal than others?”
“Shut up,” Sandy said. The color rose back in her cheeks. “Pack up,” she said. “Get out.”
"Sandy-” Mallory started, but Sandy held up a hand.
“Your contract has a two-year gag order,” Sandy said, and she smiled like she’d just dropped a brick on my foot. “You’ll have to find a different way to get publicity for your hovel of a plan.”
“Gag order?” Marla asked from the front office. She didn’t even turn around to look at them, just held up a stack of papers. “Doesn’t seem to be one of those in my contract. And my contract states that I work exclusively work for Julia Schwartz. If she’s bounced, so am I.”
“How did you-” Mallory started.
“Came with the office,” Marla said. “You hired me on when you gave Julie the bump up the ladder. I was part of the deal.”
“Were you?” I asked. “I didn’t know that.”
“It’s right here.” She stood up, turned, handed me the papers. She’d underlined a section of her contract. “It says I’m to work exclusively for you, and that I am allowed, should you resign your position or otherwise leave the company-”
“Get bounced, you mean?” I asked, loving the way Mallory and Sandy were rapidly losing control of their faces, the way they looked terrified.
“Precisely,” Marla said. “If you leave, my contract opens for renegotiation, and I can walk away from here without a black mark on my record, should I so choose.” She looked at Sandy and Mallory, let the contract fall to the floor. “I so choose,” she said, and she walked back to her desk, pulled a box out from underneath and started packing up.
“You…” Mallory looked like she’d been slapped across the face. “Julie,” she said. “We came. We found you. Sandy and I we…”
“Yeah, and that’s great,” I agreed and felt a momentary twinge of sadness. “But then you shit on me. I’m loyal like a Basset Hound, but everyone’s got an unforgivable line for me. Talk to Billie. She knows something about it.”
“We didn’t kill anyone!” Mallory shouted. “Don’t compare us to her!”
“You killed yourselves, Malllory. You and Sandy both. You signed off when you signed Billie on.” I watched the realization break across her face, watched Sandy tried to hide it on hers. “I didn’t have my name on any of it when Billie got grabbed,” I told them. “Without my permission, she erased me from what we’d been doing, what we’d been fighting for, what you’d taught us to care about. I’m pulling my name out of this mess by my own choice. You two and Billie Fraction deserve each other.”
“Don’t.” Mallory’s voice dropped to a hard, hissing whisper. “You. Compare. Us. To. Her.”
“I’m only doing what you did first,” I shot back. “You dragged her in here. You put your name in the mud with her.”
“Get out.” Sandy ordered, pointing me towards the door. “Out. Now.”
I turned to leave, perfectly happy to leave everything for someone else to sort through.
“Wait.” Mallory said.
I stopped, hand on Marla’s desk. “Yes?” I asked, turning around slowly. Marla stepped to the left of me, taking position at my shoulder.
“You can’t ruin us,” Mallory said. “It wouldn’t be right.”
“It’s business,” I said coolly. “Stand on your own damned feet.”
“What do you want?” Mallory asked, a shrewd look going across her face. “What can we give you?”
I opened my mouth to tell them how far they could shove their bribe, but Marla beat me to the punch. “We want Alligator Girl,” she demanded. “Give us Alligator Girl, and we won’t say one spiteful thing.” She put a hand over my mouth when I tried to cut in. “We’ll say anything that’s true, we’ll give our opinions, but we won’t sling shit.”
“Alligator Girl?” Mallory asked.
“That’s it,” Marla said.
“We want this in writing,” Sandy said.
I pushed Marla’s hand off my mouth. “Really?” I asked. “You really want down on paper that you gave us Alligator Girl so we wouldn’t take you to town for being amoral assholes?”
Sandy took a step forward. Mallory put a hand on her arm. “Gentlemen’s agreement?”
“Call it whatever you want,” I snapped. “Alligator Girl is ours.”
“Take it,” Mallory agreed. “Take it and get out.”
I shouldered past her and Sandy, gathered up the Alligator Girl materials, and pushed them aside again. “Let’s bounce,” I said to Marla. “I’ll buy you dinner.”
“Aren’t you a charmer?” Marla said and linked her arm with mine. We didn’t look back as we walked to the elevator. Marla stopped me as the doors opened. “Be sure,” she said.
I grinned at her. “Don’t have much choice now.”
“There’s always a moment,” Marla said. “There’s always a second to step back and say you’re sorry.”
“Don’t look behind you,” I said. “All we’ve got is straight ahead.”
1970 -- The Return of Comics
The rumors started in February. There was a story on page twelve about a young lawyer wanting to legalize comics again. Police departments were bleeding money, he said. There were better ways to spend taxpayer dollars, he said. He’d been working on a defense since he’d started law school, he said.
Sally called me from her office one day in April. “Do you have the paper?” she asked.
“Of course. Why?”
“They published the name of the lawyer,” she told me. “It’s on page four.”
I flipped to page four, skimmed until I saw the article:
Young Lawyer Going Before Supreme Court for Commies
I looked at the name. Gasped. “I’ve got-”
“Tell him hi,” Sally said. “Tell him we’re hoping.”
I hung up the phone, picked it up, dialed. One ring. Two. It struck me that he may not be home.
“Hello?”
“It’s you!” I yelled. “You’re the lawyer!”
Guy laughed. “I am.”
“The big case you’ve been writing about, this is it, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is.”
I laughed, longer than I meant to. “You could have said, you bastard!” I scolded him.
“I wanted to be sure,” he said. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up.” He chuckled. “I wanted it to be a surprise if it worked,” he said. “I can’t believe it worked.”
“When?” I asked. “When will you go?”
“I’m up in December, couple of weeks before Christmas.”
“What can I do?” I asked. “Give me something to do.”
Guy thought for a moment, humming into the phone. “Nothing,” he said. “I know it’ll make you crazy, but there’s nothing for you to do. It’s all me and my team right now.”
“You have a team?” I laughed again. “How many of them?” I asked.
“There’s three of us,” he said. “I’ve got a Big Three.”
“Guy.” I shook my head, breathed out. “What’s it called?” I asked. “Don’t they all have names, the laws?”
“We’re calling it the Ellis bill,” he said, quiet. “They wanted something else, but I put my foot down.”
“Oh.” I said. “Guy, that’s…”
“It’s what’s needed,” he said. “It’s what’s right.”
We were quiet. I listened to him breathe. “You’ll need something,” I told him. “You’ve got a few months to go. You need anything, you call us, okay? Don’t worry about the time or the day. You call us, and Sally and I will be there.”
“I will,” he promised. “Really.”
We hung up. I dialed Sally. “It’s Guy!” I said.
“I know!” she replied, and we laughed together. “What can we do?” she asked.
“We’re on hold right now,” I told her. “But something’s going to come up,” I said. “It has to.”
“Because you’ll go mad otherwise.”
“That too.”
Sally giggled. “I’m getting waved over. I’ve got to go. Go buy some cheap champagne.”
“That might be bad luck,” I said, “celebrating early.”
“Screw it,” Sally said. “I want cheap champagne.”
I bought a bottle of champagne, a block of Brie, and a pile of crumbly crackers. I considered cheap caviar, but I knew nothing about it. I went home, baked a cake, thought about calling my parents. The phone rang before I could decide what to say.
“La Rocca and Schwartz residence,” I answered.
“Julie?”
I nearly fell backward, Billie’s voice so familiar it nearly made me gasp for air. “This…this is she,” I managed to say.
“It’s Billie.”
I swallowed hard, dug out my determination not to give her an inch. “And?” I asked. “Do you need something?”
“I saw the paper today-”
“I’m throwing a party,” I said. “I’ve got things to do.”
“Jul-”
I hung up before she could finish my name, let the phone ring until it either Billie gave up for the phone disconnected itself. When Sally walked in two hours later, I had the champagne chilled, the Brie warmed, and the crackers on a plate.
“Do I smell cake?” Sally asked as she walked into the kitchen.
“Double chocolate,” I told her. “I figured we can skip the entrée entirely and just have cheese and cake.”
“Absolutely,” Sally agreed. She popped the cork on the champagne, giggled as it flowed over her hands. “Another ten months,” she said. “And we’re back in business.”
“We?” I asked, cutting into the cake.
“Of course ‘we.’ Who else would I work with?” Sally asked.
“I don’t know-”
“Not listening!” Sally yelled over me.
We drank the champagne, ate the Brie and crackers, ate the cake in slices as large as our hands. “What happens,” I asked as we sat on the couch and tried not to fall over. “What happens if it doesn’t work?”
“Shut up,” Sally said, and the ‘p’ slid around her mouth before it landed properly. “We don’t think like that.”
“I think like that.”
“Be quiet, Julie,” Sally said, and she leaned against me, let herself rest a little more weight when I didn’t move. “It’s more hope than we’ve ever had.”
“Sorry,” I said, and I leaned my head against the arm of the couch and dozed off.
Billie tried to call again the next day as Sally and I pretended like we weren’t hungover from the champagne. Sally answered the phone, listened for a moment. “We’re not interested in what you’re selling, Fraction,” she said and slammed down the receiver. We both winced.
“Aspirin,” I muttered, stumbling towards the bathroom, “I need Aspirin.”
We started clipping the stories as we found them in the paper, making a wall of Guy’s rise to fame. “I should put it in a scrapbook,” Sally said one day as she cut out a story from the bottom of the fold on page one. “I could do it in bright pink so he can always find it.”
“Aqua,” I said. “Or dark red.”
“Yellow,” she said. “The color of a baby chick.”
“Stripes,” I replied. “Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black.”
Sally’s eyes lit up. “Perfect.”
She started on it the next night. I smoothed the holes from the thumbtacks and helped her lay them out in chronological order.
Guy called six weeks before. “I’m about to pass out,” he said. “I just realized I’m going to get up in front of the Supreme Court.”
“Sack up,” I ordered him. “Your other option is to wet yourself.”
“You’re about as comforting as a rabid porcupine, Julie,” he told me.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
“Put Sally on. I’ve never talked to her. I bet she’s nicer than you.”
“Sack up,” I repeated and hung up as he laughed.
He called again three days before he went in front of the Court. “Can you come out here?” he asked. “To D.C., I mean.”
“Me?” I asked.
“I’ve got my team, but they’re just here for the law. They’re not here for…”
I waited, listened to him tap his fingers against a table. He must be at his hotel, I realized. He must be sitting in a half-dark room with no one to really understand. “I could bring Sally,” I offered. “She could call in sick.”
“You have to show ID to get into the Court,” Guy said. “Her name’s still on the list.”
“I’ll come alone, then,” I said. “I’ll tell them I’m your sister or something.”
There was a pause, then Guy coughed, an embarrassed sound. I pictured him blushing. “I told them you’re my girl,” he said. “They know I don’t have a sister.”
I blinked, wondered what I’d look like if I could see my own face. “I’m not kissing you hello,” I told him. “Not for anything.”
Guy laughed, relief coloring his tone. “I’ll tell them you’re shy about affection,” he promised. “You’ll show, then?”
“Of course,” I promised. “I’ll get a ticket now.”
I arrived the day before, wearing the closest thing I had to a proper travelling suit. Guy was waiting in the terminal, dressed in a dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a red tie. I stopped short at the sight of it, suddenly picturing him five years before showing up to give me nothing but bad news.
“Julie?” he asked, and his hand was on my arm, curling around my elbow. “You okay?”
I blinked, shook my head, tried to find a smile. “Yeah. You look…” I watched him look himself over, could see he didn’t make the connection. “You were wearing something similar the night you first came over,” I told him. I watched the realization slide across his face, the sudden pinch between his eyebrows. “It’s okay. I just…I try not to think about it a lot, and here you are, looking like a cut out.”
“Should probably warn you,” he said, leading me towards the baggage claim, “most of my wardrobe looks like this now. My being a lawyer and everything.”
I chuckled at that, shook off his hand so I could slide mine into the bend of his elbow. “I’ll manage,” I promised. “Where are we headed?”
“I got you the room next to mine. The boys want to take you out on the town, ply you with cheap alcohol, and get you to tell stories about me.”
“How long have we been dating?” I asked.
“I told them a few years; I told them I met you through some friends.”
I thought about Agent Starling. “Well, close enough I suppose.” I pointed out the square green suitcase with the blue ribbon. “That’s mine.”
Guy hefted it from the carousel, insisted on carrying it to his car. “I’m supposed to do this,” he admonished with a grin. “I’m the boyfriend.”
“What else are you ‘supposed’ to do?” I asked, making sure my air quotes were properly exaggerated.
“Open doors, get the check, help you with your coat, and hold out your chair,” he told me.
“Really?” I asked.
“Sure.” He led the way through the outer doors of the airport, over to short term parking, and stopped in front of a squat, two-door car. “Did you never date a guy?” he asked as he unlocked the trunk and settled my suitcase.
“No one worth dating back home,” I told him. “At least, no more than a soda or something. And then it was Billie.”
“And now?” he asked.
“And now I work all the time,” I answered. “And I don’t have that kind of time.” I pointed a finger before he could argue. “You made me your girlfriend for this trip, and that tells me you don’t have one, either.”
He opened his mouth to argue, laughed, picked me up and swung me around in a hug. “I’ve missed you,” he said as he put me back on the ground. “I know we kind of came together in a hot mess, but damned if I haven’t felt like I’ve lost a great friend since you skittered off to Portland.”
“Me, too,” I told him and let him open my car door. “There’s some cliché about friendships formed in fire.”
“They beat clichés out of you in law school,” Guy told me, leaning against the open car door. “Don’t want you to bore a jury.”
“Come on,” I said and swatted at his knee, “show me where I’m staying.”
It was a large hotel, bright white with picture windows for every room. I had a view of the parking lot. "Classy," I called over my shoulder to Guy as he tossed my suitcase onto the luggage rack.
"Last minute, you're lucky we've got an adjoined room," he told me. He sat in the chair by the bed, opened the drawer on the table and looked inside. "You've got a Bible," he said.
"Oh, good, I'm always running short on those." We grinned at each other. Someone knocked on the door, and Guy was on his feet before I could move.
"That'll be the guys," he told me.
"I'll play the proper lady and freshen up a bit," I said, turning towards the bathroom. I listened to Guy greet two men while I applied fresh lipstick and straightened my hair. When I walked back into the main part of the room, there were two men sitting on the bed. One was tall and slim-shouldered with black hair and a comfortable smile. The other was huge, more than six and a half feet, with hands that completely encased mine when he shook my hand hello. He looked like a boxer.
"Kyle Rayner," Guy said, gesturing to the one with black hair, "and Wayne Kilo."
"Nice to meet you," Kyle said, and his smile fell easily into a smirk. "How many embarrassing stories do you have?"
"I couldn't possibly tell you," I demurred.
"Well, let's have dinner," Wayne said. He offered me his arm. I curled both hands around his elbow. "And I insist on buying the lovely lady a drink."
"This is going to end badly," Guy said. "So badly."
Wayne did, indeed, buy the first round. Kyle insisted on buying the second. Guy insisted on dinner before the third. "Such kind boys," I said and fluttered my eyebrows. I could hear Guy hiding a laugh against the back of his hand. I reached under the table and pinched his knee. The waiter came by, cleared our empties, took the dinner order, and departed again. I looked from Guy to Kyle to Wayne. Kyle and Wayne were watching me. Guy was watching them. "Yes?" I asked Kyle and Wayne.
"You're not his girlfriend," Kyle said.
Guy sat up straighter. "Hey!"
"She's not," Wayne added.
"Hey!" Guy repeated.
I leaned against the table, crossed my arms, gave them both a stern look. "You're both terrible," I said, sounding teasing. "It's quite the claim you're making."
"No pictures," Kyle said, holding up a finger. "No letters."
"Phone calls every couple of weeks," Wayne added. "No guy has a girl who looks like you and doesn't call her at least twice a week."
"And she doesn't live halfway across the country from a guy like him," Kyle finished.
I kept my posture casual. From the corner of my eye, I could see Guy attempting to do the same, but his shoulders were a bit too stiff, his hands a bit too tense. I could see that Kyle and Wayne saw it as well. "Full disclosure," I suggested. "Are you former cops?"
"Yes," Wayne said. Kyle nodded.
"All right." I leaned back, took a sip of my water, pressed my napkin against my mouth to dry the edges of my lips. "I'm not his girlfriend," I confirmed. I poked Guy in the ribs before his shoulders could tighten further. "Give it up," I told him. "You trust them, right?"
"Yeah," Guy said, and his shoulders finally relaxed. He flexed his hands, reached for his glass, took a long drink of water.
"I'm Julia Schwartz," I told them. "Just like he said."
"But you're not his girlfriend," Kyle said.
"No," I agreed. "Not even close." I glanced around the restaurant. It was only half-full, the nearest table of people four tables away. I leaned in close, Kyle and Wayne met me halfway across the table. "You know about Billie Fraction?" I asked.
"Sure," Kyle said, and Wayne nodded.
"I was her girlfriend," I told them. "I was there the day Agent Starling and Officer Gardner arrested her. I was part of it."
Wayne and Kyle looked at one another, looked at Guy. Guy nodded. "Part of it?" Wayne asked, obviously looking for clarification.
"I'm a commie."
They both reeled back a little, leaned back in, Guy's hand on my back was something between a warning and support. "She is," Guy said in an undertone, so low it barely carried across the table.
"Whoa," Kyle said. He shook his head. "Wow."
"Fantastic," Wayne said, and he smiled. "This is great." He shrugged when we all looked at him in surprise. "Imagine," he said to Guy and Kyle, "if we pull this off, if our arguments stick, imagine what it'll do when people find out Julia Schwartz was sitting in the gallery."
"People don't know who I am," I said. "My name's off everything they found at the house in Missouri."
"You've got something, right?" Kyle asked. "Something with your name on it?"
"Sure," I said. "But not where anyone's going to find it anytime soon."
"Well, there's your proof then. Once this is squared away, once we win, you can say you were there when it happened." Kyle grinned. "Hell, it makes our point for us, doesn't it? A law so wasteful and ineffectual that someone involved-"
"Heavily involved," Guy interjected.
"Heavily involved," Kyle amended, "was sitting up front in the gallery that day under the guise of being no one in particular. It proves how completely harmless the whole thing is, proves the waste of time and effort."
"We'll see," Guy said. "Let's not count our win until we have it."
"We've got it," Wayne said.
Wayne turned out to be right. Guy argued free speech and no rise in delinquent behavior, and the opposing side tried to argue safety and propriety.
"The only crime committed here," Guy said to the judges, "are the crimes that had to be committed to prove an unjust law. There was no reason for comics to be outlawed-"
"There was Dr. Wertham's book, Mr. Gardner," one of the justices said. "There were congressional hearings."
"One man wrote one book, your honor," Guy countered. "And while I don't have the numbers in front of me, I'm comfortable stating that congressional hearings rarely lead to laws. But beyond the one man and his one book, there is the fact that his book has proven not to be true. If comics caused delinquency, if they caused unlawful behavior, then there would have been a rise of crime amongst those in the illegal comic business, and they, as I have mentioned before, were only acting illegally because the law took away their first amendment right to believe what they wanted, to say what they wanted, and to read what they wanted as long as those wants did not lead them to violence. And if those wants had led them to violence, there are already good, honorable laws in play that handle those situations.
"We are a nation of free thinkers, your honors. We were founded by men who did not want to be silenced by their government, and who did not want a government that would silence its people. The government overstepped their place when they said comic books-based on the opinions of a single man-should be banned. The government allowed their personal concern about comic books to overshadow their role as lawmakers and rational persons who want to keep their country great and their citizens safe. Safety comes in being able to be honest, hard-working, and upstanding. Take away this law, and you'll have hundreds, maybe thousands, of people happy to live their lives as upstanding citizens because the only reason they have broken the law is because it is unjust and violates the most basic laws outlined in our constitution. We have a first amendment, or we don't. We can't shave off the parts we do not approve and say it is still free speech for all."
The judges deliberated for two days. Guy didn't leave his hotel room. Kyle and Wayne went for food. I sat next to Guy on his bed and put an arm around his shoulders. "It takes or it doesn't," I told him. "You can't say you didn’t try."
"If they turn it down…" Guy said, turned to look out the window. "It'll be another ten or twenty years just to argue it back up the courts."
"You up for it?" I asked, wondering what would happen if he said no.
Guy dropped his head, linked his hands around the back of his neck. "I'll decide after they tell us their answer for now," he told me. "I've got to keep the plan of it in my head, you know?"
"Yeah," I said. "I know." I leaned against his shoulder. We ate in silence when Kyle and Wayne came back with food, stayed silent until Guy's room phone rang, and we were called back to the court.
The Head Justice shuffled papers for nearly two minutes. I was tempted to stand up and asked him to get to it. Looking at the way Guy was tapping his fingers on his knee, I knew he felt it, too.
"You gave us a great deal to think about, Mr. Gardner," the Head Justice said. "And while we disagree with your feelings that those responsible for illegal activity had a right to do so because they felt the law was unjust, we do agree that the first amendment should not be sectioned off into slivers of the right type of speech and the wrong type of speech."
The Head Justice paused, looked at his notes. I wondered if he'd written down his whole speech or if he was just a dramatic person. "We have found, in a 7-2 decision, that the laws banning comic books should be overturned."
I nearly jumped out of my chair. Guy merely straightened up, a grin splitting his face.
"Furthermore," the Head Justice continued, "as of this ruling, we will allow all persons involved in the creation, sale, and distribution of illegal comic books who have not been found linked to other crimes or instances of unlawful behavior to be given a full amnesty." The Head Justice looked up from his notes and looked around the room. "Mr. Gardner, I await your thanks for such a quick response."
"Thank you," Guy said immediately. He stood, straightened his tie, gave the whole panel of justices a wide smile. "Thank you very much, your honors." He waited for them to leave, waited for the door to close, and then he turned to face me and whooped. "We did it!" He jumped the partition between his table and the gallery, picked me up and swung me around. "The Ellis Act is going to be law!" he put me on my feet again. There were tears in his eyes. "It's not the same-"
"Don't," I told him. "She'd have been thrilled." I hugged him tight around the neck, turned to look at Kyle and Wayne who were still on the other side of the partition. "Beers on me," I offered, and they cheered.
There were reporters waiting on the steps when we left, only a dozen or so, but they clambered up the steps, nearly crowded us against a pillar. "Mr. Gardner, what is your reaction to the court's decision in your favor?"
"I'm not surprised at all," Guy said like he hadn't been second-guessing himself during deliberations. "The court understands the importance of free speech, and the justices understand the kind of power the government could have in limiting it."
"What about the amnesty notation?" Someone else asked. "What does that mean, exactly?"
"It means exactly what it says. People who were involved with comics and were not connected to any other illegal activity will be pardoned for what they did during the time that comics were illegal. Conversely, if it's found that persons working on comics during the illegal period were also involved in criminal activities, they will be prosecuted for those activities that are still considered criminal."
"Do you know any of these people?" someone asked from the back of the crowd. "The commies, I mean. Do you know them?"
I squeezed Guy's arm before he could look at me. Behind me, I felt Kyle and Wayne move a little closer.
"I'm here for free speech," Guy said. "And that's my only goal. If you'll excuse me, we're off to celebrate."
A couple of the reporters tried to follow, but Wayne and Kyle loomed until they scurried away. We said nothing until we got back to the hotel. I collapsed on my bed, kicked off my heels, eyed the adjoining door when Guy knocked on the other side.
"I was tempted to tell them who you were," he said when I unlatched the door.
"Best you don't," I replied. "I'd rather wait until the law is officially on the books."
"I figured."
I gestured him in, tossed him the room service menu. "I'm calling Sally," I said. "She probably doesn't know yet."
"Let me tell her," Guy requested, and he toed off his shoes.
"No," I said and pushed him over on the bed so I could sit and reach the phone. "Not until after."
"Superstitious," Guy muttered.
"Cautious," I returned. I dialed the operator, asked to place a long -distance call, listened to the phone ring and wondered if Sally would be home. It was a Thursday, and it was only four-thirty in D. C.
"Hello?" Sally answered, sounding breathless.
"It's me," I told her. "We got it." There was a long pause. "Sally?" I asked.
"Holy hell," Sally muttered. "It was on the radio," she told me. "At work, it was on the radio, and I had to leave. I had-" She cut off, choked. "I didn't-"
"Me neither," I told her. We were silent for a few moments. I listened to her cry, listened to her hit the wall and slide down, could picture her in the kitchen against the striped wallpaper. "Did you hear about the amnesty?" I asked.
"Yeah," she said. She hiccupped, coughed. "Yeah," her voice was stronger. "We can go home."
"Yeah," I agreed. "It'll take a few months, but yeah."
"Wow."
We dropped into silence again. "I should be back in a couple of days," I said finally. "Get some good champagne this time, all right?"
Sally laughed then sniffled. "I'll see what I can find."
We said goodbye and hung up. I stared at the phone for a minute, stared out the window, waited for the euphoria to hit me.
"You okay?" Guy asked.
"I'm…" I stood up, stretched, pulled the pins from my hair. "Tired. I'm tired. I'm going to nap before we get dinner if that's all right."
"Sure. I'll tell Kyle and Wayne." Guy sat up on the bed, swung his legs over, gestured for me to lie down and walked to the adjoining door. "Half an hour all right?"
"It's fine," I told him, and I curled into the warm spot he'd left, closed my eyes, and tried to let myself drift off. Be happy, I thought, but there was a knot in my stomach I couldn't convince to unknot.
The last post will only be about 5,000 words. Shocking, isn't it?
Previous installments:
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six Part Seven Part Eight Part Nine Part Ten Part Eleven
1966 -- The Next Step Forward
“Another letter,” Sally said one night when she came home from work. She put the envelope in my line of sight, to the left of my typewriter. “They’re getting more frequent.”
“Great,” I muttered and stared at the envelope, shell pink with Billie’s spider-light script making the ‘J’ in my first name almost unreadable. “Stick it away,” I said. “I don’t want it.”
“I could throw it out,” Sally offered. She always offered.
“No,” I said. “Just stick it in the box by my bed.”
“I don’t get you,” Sally told me as she picked up the letter again. “You won’t read them, but you won’t toss them. You can’t just keep them around. It’s morbid.”
“Leave it,” I replied, and I heard her sigh as she walked to my bedroom.
We split the rent on a smallish two-bedroom with fresh paint and surprisingly roomy closets. Sally worked in the art department of an ad agency, drawing soda and airplanes and other round, shiny things that always looked too flat on paper. I was getting by publishing science fiction stories under J. Schwartz. Sometimes I got fan mail. People assume I was male. I couldn’t find the energy to correct anyone. I wrote three stories a week because the silence in the apartment nearly killed me unless the typewriter was clattering.
“Dinner?” Sally asked from the kitchen.
“The roast should be ready in another ten minutes,” I called in return. “You can check it now if you want.”
“Nah, ten minutes gives me time to make a drink,” Sally replied. I listened to the bottles rattle, the sound of ice dropping into glasses, the swishing clink of Sally stirring up an old fashioned. She carried out one for me, put it where the letter had been. “How’s it going?” she asked every night. I could tell from her face she kept hoping I’d talk about myself.
“I wrote something that wasn’t science fiction,” I told her. “It’s really short, so no one will probably want it, but I liked it.”
“Can I see it?”
I shuffled through the stack of typed pages to my right, found the four pages I’d written in a sudden rush of inspiration I couldn’t pin on anything. I handed them to her, sipped my drink, wrote three more lines about two people stranded on Mars because their rocket ship had lost a booster rocket. Wendy’s insistence on research had stuck with me, made my science fiction more research-based than most.
“This is lovely,” Sally said after a few minutes. She flipped back two pages, reread something that made her smile. “Jules-”
“Julie,” I corrected.
Sally gave me the same exasperated look she’d been giving me for nearly ten months. “Whatever,” she countered. “This is damn near romantic.”
“There was a call for it,” I told her. “In the back of one of my magazines.”
“Think you could pad it out?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
She put the pages down, smoothed the edges. “It reminds me of when you first met Billie,” she said quietly, hesitance giving away how close she knew she was to hitting a sore spot. “There’s a great tension to it.”
“Tension’s good,” I replied. I took another sip of my drink. “It’s what keeps people reading.”
Sally sighed, reached back and undid her hair so it fell down her back. “You have to talk about her sometime,” she told me. She pushed every week or so.
“Not yet,” I told her like I always did. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Admit you’re made,” Sally said.
“I’ve done that. You’ve heard me.”
Sally rolled her eyes. “Fine. Then admit something else. Admit that part of you wants to go back and tell her you’re sorry. Say that you understand on a level.”
“Stop it,” I told her. “I don’t want to do this.”
She eyed me, looking ready to push further than she had previously. “Fine,” she finally said and sighed. She stood up, picked up her drink, gave me a look that called me stupid. “But keeping it bottled up is going to make it worse, you know.”
“I’ve got to write,” I told her.
Sally walked to the other side of the living room, clicked on the television, left it to warm up while she went back into the kitchen. I heard her get down plates, open the drawer for forks. I finished the paragraph I was writing, stood up, walked into the kitchen in time for her to hand me a plate.
“Don’t worry so much,” I told her. “I’ve got it.”
“You’re my friend,” Sally said. “I’m supposed to worry.”
“I’m a grown woman, Sal. You can’t keep waiting for me to crack.”
“You’re going to,” she predicted, pointing at me. “Eventually, you have to snap.”
I leaned against the counter, ate a bite of roast, speared a piece of carrot, watched Sally walk away, back to the living room, listened to the springs squeak in the couch as she sat down. She didn’t know how often I thought about Billie, how often I stayed up until three or four in the morning, staring at the ceiling in my bedroom and thinking about everything that was said, everything that was done. Everything I changed in my head. I couldn’t tell her I changed the story in my head, made it about Billie saving me rather than being too scared to do what was right. She’d hate me, I thought. Or, at least, she’d think I’d cracked.
We finished the night in silence. Sally watching a program then mending a pair of socks while I finished the story of the stranded astronauts, had them make it home because the aliens of the world wanted them away, made them swear not to come back. I used a paper clip to hold the whole story together, reached into the bottom drawer of my slightly worn desk for an envelope, and I shoved the story inside. I was sending it to one of my usual magazines. They printed me almost monthly. Had mentioned, in letters, wanting to make me a regular contributor, I was so popular.
“I’m going to bed,” Sally said. She stood up, stretched, looked like she was going to walk over and hug me.
“Goodnight,” I said before she could do it. I concentrated on addressing the envelope, finding the right stamps from the loose pile in the middle, shallow drawer of my desk. Sally washed her face, changed clothes, walked into her bedroom. I only looked up again when the door clicked shut.
I was of the world, I thought, but not quite in it. All my attempts to make friends, to socialize, had faded away. I stayed home and wrote, went out for groceries, came home again. I was reading a book a week, the newspaper front to back, and I never made eye contact on the street. I wanted to lock myself away further, get my own apartment, a studio no bigger than a closet, I thought. Enough space for a bed and a desk. I could write and sleep, which is all I felt like doing most days anyway.
Sally’s door opened. She walked out in her nightgown, a glass in her hand. “I need water,” she told me. She walked to the bathroom, and I listened to her fill the glass. She paused in the threshold of her door, looked at me. The living room light was on, but her bedroom light wasn’t. Half of her body disappeared into the shadows. “You can’t keep doing this,” she said like she’d practiced it. I wondered if she had. “You’ve got a life to live, Julie. Waiting for…whatever you’re waiting for, it’s not life to have.”
“It’s mine,” I told her, and for a moment, I felt my temper rise.
“It’s pathetic,” she countered, and she sounded so sad my temper dropped like a stone. “You’ve lost your fierceness,” she told me. “And I don’t want to think that Billie got it away from you.” She walked into her room, shut the door. I listened to her settle on the bed.
I’m still fierce, I thought. I know I am. I picked up a half-finished story, read a few pages. There was fierceness there, determination and grit. I stood up, walked to Sally’s door, slid the story under.
“Doesn’t count,” she said through the door. “Writing it isn’t living it.”
I considered throwing open the door, demanding she look at me when she said things like that. I walked away instead, into my bedroom, sat on my bed and stared at the box with Billie’s letters. I picked up one, traced the ‘J’ in my first name. I could open them, I thought. I could read her apology, laugh at it, throw the envelopes out of the window and watch them flutter to the ground, land on the fire escape for the neighbors to find.
I laid down in bed, pulled the blanket over myself and let myself drift off.
The next day was Saturday. I left early, a note on the icebox telling Sally I was doing the shopping. I got home in the early afternoon, groceries in both arms. I had to knock on the door with my foot to have Sally let me in. It took nearly a minute to get to the door. She looked completely shocked. “You all right?” I asked and slid past her when she didn’t move from the door. I opened my mouth to ask again, but I’d walked into the living room, saw the stack of shell pink envelopes balanced carefully on the coffee table.
“Julie-” Sally started.
“The eggs were terrible today,” I interrupted. “I’ll have to check back Monday, but I think we have enough-”
“Hell’s bells, Julie!” Sally snapped.
I turned to look at her, adjusted the bugs I was hitting so I wouldn’t drop them. “What?” I asked. “Look, can you take the left bag-”
Sally snatched it out of my hand, stomped to the kitchen. The breeze she made caused the envelopes to topple into a loose pile onto the carpet. I put down the other bag, stacked the envelopes again, put them back onto the table. I picked up my bag, carried it into the kitchen. Sally threw a glass of water on my face when I walked in.
“The hell?” I yelled and sputtered.
Sally took the other bag from me, set it on the counter, splashed another glass of water on my face. “Snap out of it!” she ordered. She put down the glass, crossed her arms, glared at me. “Really, Julie, sleepwalking like this can’t be good for you.”
“Neither is trying to drown me, you cow!” I yelled. “What the hell?”
Sally grinned a little. “There you are,” she said. She tossed me a kitchen towel, watched me wipe my face, squeeze the water from the damp strands of my hair. “I’ve been nice for months,” she told me. “I’ve been trying to give you time to deal with things, but that was absolutely the last straw.”
“What?” I asked. I dabbed at the wet spot down my front, decided it would have to dry on its own. “The letters? What was that, Sally, some sort of sneak attack?”
She rubbed a hand over her face, looked over my shoulder toward the living room. “That was bad timing,” she admitted after a minute. “I went into your room to get a needle and thread from your sewing basket, and they were right there on your bedside table. I started opening them and reading them before I could stop myself.” Her cheeks flushed pink, and she looked away from me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
I opened my mouth, planning to berate her, tell her not to go through my things. “What did they say?” I asked. I was so surprised, I closed my mouth hard enough to make my teeth click.
Sally looked just as shocked. “Are you-”
“No,” I interrupted, “but tell me anyway.”
“Okay.” Sally swallowed, looked at the floor for a moment. “She…” she met my eyes. “She says a lot, Julie, but she doesn’t apologize. She writes like you’ve already sent her a note. Have you?”
“No,” I said. “Of course not. You’re the one who puts out the mail in the mornings.”
“And then I leave you home for the whole day,” Sally pointed out. “I don’t know what you do all day besides write stories and make dinner.”
“I don’t write her,” I said, and my temper flared at the idea. “I might want to, sure, but I don’t. What would I say, Sally?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Because there’s nothing to say. She really writes like everything’s okay, Julie. She thinks you’ll go home soon.”
“She can’t be that deluded,” I replied. “You’re making that up.”
“I can show you,” she offered, and the way she straightened up, ready to walk to the letters scattered on the table made it completely true.
“No,” I said. “I believe you.” I sighed, pulled a piece of wet hair off of my cheek, watched Sally watch me. “Hell,” I muttered. “How didn’t I see it?” I asked. “How could I miss this entire side of her?”
“Love makes you stupid, right?” Sally asked. I nodded, and she gave a knowing smirk. “There you go.” She reached out, pressed a palm to my arm. “She’s not the most horrible person ever, darling. It’s not like she was flaunting her lesser attributes.”
“Lesser attributes,” I snorted, “that’s kind.”
“She’s nuts,” Sally amended. “Does that make it any better to hear?”
I sighed. “No.”
“Although, if my being overly kind about the matter makes you get over it, I’ll do it,” she offered.
“No,” I repeated and waved a hand. “Don’t do that.” I thought for a moment. “Maybe that’s the problem,” I said.
“Hmm?” Sally asked.
“You’ve been outrageously kind about the whole thing,” I told her. “Trying to ask, letting me know you were wondering, but not stepping further if I look like I’m going to flee. Maybe I needed this. Maybe you should have done this months ago.”
“Wish I’d known,” Sally told me.
I closed my eyes, breathed deep, thought about the letters on the coffee table. “No apology?” I asked. “Not even a little one?”
“It’s all pleasantries and plans for when you get home,” Sally told me. “Some bits and pieces about what she’s doing now.”
“Which is?”
“Writing a novel at the moment. She’s working in a different office than when you were together. They chose not to hire her back after-and this is a quote-“the incident with the police.” Because admitting she got Wendy put to death is a bit too real for her.”
“Do you think she’s crazy,” I asked Sally. “I mean actually crazy. Do you think she’s unhinged?”
“I think she’s kidding herself like you were,” Sally said after a moment of thought. “I think you dealt with it by burying yourself in work and keeping things clean around here, and she’s dealing with it by pretending its not there.”
“Hell of an elephant to have in the room,” I said.
“But she’s got so much space since you left,” Sally told me. “And probably no one at all to talk to. She specifically says she won’t call here because she’s afraid I’ll answer, and she doesn’t know what to say to me.”
“I wouldn’t know what to say to her,” I admitted. “I try to picture it, to hear it, and there’s nothing there.”
“Really?” Sally asked. “That’s surprising. You write for a living.”
“I write other people,” I pointed out. “I’ve never scripted myself.”
“I suppose.” Sally looked over my shoulder again. “Don’t read them,” she told me. “Don’t waste your energy on them. Don’t waste it on her.”
“Isn’t that what I have been doing?” I asked. “I can practically hear you say it some nights when you’re quiet.”
“Then don’t waste any more,” Sally said. “ If you don’t want to talk to her and you don’t want to talk about her, then don’t let her into your head. Don’t let her have a place anywhere. Pretend she’s not out there.”
“That’s it?” I asked, surprised. “Pretend Billie Fraction never killed Wendy Ellis?”
Sally shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant, if you want nothing to do with her, then do nothing about her or the idea of her, okay? Let it drift away or lock it down or something. Come back to yourself, Jules.”
I didn’t correct her use of my name. The way she was looking at me, worried and sad and tired, made the weight of Billie in my memories a very heavy rock around my neck. I rubbed at my neck like there was actually a rope there, curved my palm around the side of my neck and felt my pulse flutter. “I’ll try,” I promised. “I’ll see what I can do.”
To Be Concluded
I didn’t see Sally for the rest of the day, didn’t hear from Dinick or Jackie. When I walked down the hall in the late afternoon to stretch my legs, half the people who looked at me did it with suspicion.
“The air’s up,” I told Marla when I got back, feeling a prickle up my spine. “It’s all over the building.”
“You look ruffled,” she told me. “Everything okay?”
“I think people think I’m defecting from Mallory and Sandy’s idea,” I said. “The looks I got, it reminds me of Annie.”
“Annie?” Marla asked.
“She ratted us once,” I said. “It’s best not to mention her around Sally. She was Sally’s Sidekick.
“Oh,” Marla’s lips thinned when she pressed them together. “You think people think you’re being obstinate to be obstinate?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know. But that’s what it feels like.”
“If anyone asks, don’t say anything,” Marla advised. “Tell them you’ve heard the rumors, too.”
“I feel bad,” I admitted, “laying all of this on Sally.”
“She’ll be fine,” Marla said with a decisive edge in her tone. “She knows what she’s doing. You’ve said so.”
“I suppose,” I agreed. Marla gave me a dark look, and I gave myself a shake like a dog coming out of the water. “I don’t doubt her tenacity or determination,” I explained, and Marla’s glare subsided slightly. “I just don’t like the idea of her up there facing off with Mallory and Sandy when all we have is a half-cocked plan and no one but us signed up.”
“Isn’t that how comics stayed around?” Marla asked. “Couple of people, a half-cocked plan?”
I had to nod at that. “Sure, but still. It’s been a while since we’ve needed to act like revolutionaries.”
Marla glanced at the clock. “Lucky it’s only an hour until the doors close. Mallory and Sandy never stay past five. Sally will get out of there soon enough.” She reached into her bottom desk drawer, handed me a stack of files. “And while you’re waiting and worried that you’re not doing enough, here’s a stack of confidential files for you.”
I looked at the stack, nearly two inches thick. “Non-contracted writers, I presume?”
“Some of them, yes. Others are non-exclusive.”
“Wouldn’t that put the screws in them,” I mused. “To have to share the talent.”
“Get into your office with those,” Marla said with a shooing motion. “I can carry them around without anyone raising an eyebrow, but you never carry files.”
“Going, going,” I said, and I shut my office door behind me. I dropped the files into the middle of my desk, sat in my chair, stared at the pile. I knew a few of the non-contract writers, the people who were brought in and out as other writers got too busy or bowed out of a contract renewal. They wrote fast, and they could usually pull together a book in a week. The writing quality varied. Did I want fast? Did I want talented? Could I get both?
I was halfway down the stack, two piles on either side-contact or not contact-when I heard Marla greet someone in the front office. I mixed the files into a single pile again, threw them on the corner of my desk with the rest of the files I hadn’t put back into place. Marla knocked on the door a moment later, stuck her head in and announced Mallory and Sandy.
They walked in, sat on the loveseat. Sandy looked just as angry as she had that morning. Mallory looked ready to fight down a bear. They had something, I thought. Or they thought they did. I wondered which one it was.
“Sally La Rocca says you had no knowledge of her meeting this morning,” Sandy said. “She says she’s trying to start her own company and that she tried to convince you, but you turned her down, said you were loyal to us.”
I was tempted to take the easy way, say it was true, save my skin from whatever Sandy and Mallory were about to do to me. “What’s happening to Sally?” I asked.
“Her contract’s terminated,” Mallory said, sounding like she was spitting nails. “She’s fired as of five o’clock.”
“Wasn’t there a non-compete clause in her contract?” I asked. “Something to stop her from doing this sort of thing?”
“No,” Mallory’s face pinched. “We brought her in early. We didn’t see the need for one, and it slipped our minds during renewal.”
Lucky Sally, I thought. They’d remembered mine during my third year. For as long as my contract was in play, I wasn’t allowed to do any work for anyone except the two of them. I’d double-checked my contract to be sure, and it was on the third page, big as day.
“Why fire her?” I asked. “You could sue her for breach, couldn’t you?”
“We’d rather keep this quiet,” Mallory said, and I realized suddenly that they weren’t in my office to call me out. They were there to negotiate. They knew I was involved, at what level they didn’t know, but they knew Sally and I were working together.
“You want my silence,” I said. “You want to know what it’s going to take to tell people I had no part in it. That I was a poor little pawn in the game.”
Mallory said nothing, but Sandy spoke. “Basically,” she said. “What do you want?”
“Reinstate Sally.”
“No,” Sandy said.
“Tell Billie to get stuffed.”
“No,” Sandy said.
I put my arms behind my head, leaned back in my chair. “Well, that’s that then, isn’t it?” I watched them look at one another, felt a wicked flash shine up my spine. “Question.”
They looked at me like I was about to jump across the narrow space between our knees and rip out their throats. I felt like I could. “Yes?” Mallory prompted after a moment. Her eyes widened as I grinned. I probably looked feral, I figured.
“You’re not suing Sally when you’re completely in the right and could take her for every cent and ruin her name to boot. Why not?” I felt my grin widen. I dropped my arms from behind my head, crossed them in front of me, tucked them under my breasts. “She’ll tell,” I said, and it all snapped into place. “You try to sue her, she’ll tell the judge why, say it’s because the two of you hired Billie Fraction, broke your own code. It’ll be all over the public record, all over the public. Any good publicity you get for giving Billie Fraction a second chance will get completely ruined by Sally getting up and telling the truth.”
“It’s not the truth,” Mallory said. “It’s a handy lie she’ll use to try to get out of trouble with us.”
“Sure,” I said. “And I’ve got a bridge I can sell you.” I stood up, stretched, watched them tense up when I dropped my arms to my sides, popped my neck. “You want my silence?” I asked. “You want my name out of this?”
“Yes.” Mallory said. “What can we do?”
“Get out of my office,” I told her. I sneered at both of them. “Bounce.”
“You’ll leave it be, then?” Mallory asked. Hope flickered across her face.
I shook my head. “Not even a little,” I said. “I’ll honor my contract to the letter. No competition, nothing even smelling of trying to undermine you.”
“But?” Sandy asked, eyes flashing, ready to take me down if she needed.
“But,” I said, and I let the word hang in the air. “That’ll leave me here, working for you, not competing and being so brutally, utterly honest everyone in this building will know every sordid detail of what you’ve shunned to get Billie Fraction in the door. They’ll know you sold out everything you believed in because it’s going to make you a buck.”
“Business is about making money, Julie,” Sandy snapped. “No one in this building thinks different.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “But there’s business, and there’s business without scruples. You know what makes bad business, Sandy? Bad people. People willing to say that they’re going to run things a certain way and then shit all over it because they might get a little bit famous. People like you.”
She was out of her seat then, coming up on me. I stared her down; six inches taller, and I stopped her a foot from my nose. “You can’t badmouth the company,” she hissed. “It violates confidentiality.”
“Not in the building,” I replied. “Bylaws of the company, Sandy. Sure you remember them.” I looked away from her, dismissed her by turning my shoulder told her, looked at Mallory. “You remember too, right Mallory? Number seven?”
Mallory looked like she’d been slapped in the face. “Seven?”
“Marla!” I barked, and Marla opened the door so quickly I knew she’d been listening in. “Grab the bylaws, will you? Should be under ‘B’.”
“Just a moment,” she chirped, and I could see that she knew what I was doing. She knew number seven, too. Lucky seven, Mallory and Sandy had called it more than once. Because it gave the best law in the world.
“Got it,” Marla said. She looked at my expectantly. “Need a copy?”
“Read number seven,” I told her. “We just need a brief refresher.”
She flipped pages, trailed a finger down until she found number seven. “All parties contracted with Perpetual Comics understand-”
“Quiet,” Mallory interrupted. “We know it.”
“Cram it,” I snapped. “Continue, Marla,” I said sweetly, watching Mallory and Sandy go ashen.
“That confidentiality is a byproduct of all good business,” Marla continued like she hadn’t been cut off. “But it is also important to acknowledge the rights of this great country; the rights that won us the chance to be a business of legitimate means that will become a great business. From this day in,” she paused. “Do you need the date?” she asked, a bland expression on her face.
“No, thanks,” I told her. “It happened before my contract was signed, and we all know that.”
“All right.” Marla found her place again. “From this day in,” she repeated, “the first amendment will be followed to both the letter and spirit of the law. While all employees of Perpetual Comics will be expected to sign confidentially agreements regarding their work to persons outside of Perpetual Comics, employees will always be allowed to be honest and-if needed-harsh in their criticism of Perpetual Comics or any of its business practices.” Marla paused again. “I’ve got two more paragraphs.”
“Do they change the meaning of the first?” I asked.
Marla skimmed them. “No.”
“Didn’t think so. Thank you, Marla. Leave the door open.” I raised my eyebrows at Mallory and Sandy. “Going to change the bylaws?” I asked. “Explain that some parts of the first amendment are more important than others? That some of us animals are more equal than others?”
“Shut up,” Sandy said. The color rose back in her cheeks. “Pack up,” she said. “Get out.”
"Sandy-” Mallory started, but Sandy held up a hand.
“Your contract has a two-year gag order,” Sandy said, and she smiled like she’d just dropped a brick on my foot. “You’ll have to find a different way to get publicity for your hovel of a plan.”
“Gag order?” Marla asked from the front office. She didn’t even turn around to look at them, just held up a stack of papers. “Doesn’t seem to be one of those in my contract. And my contract states that I work exclusively work for Julia Schwartz. If she’s bounced, so am I.”
“How did you-” Mallory started.
“Came with the office,” Marla said. “You hired me on when you gave Julie the bump up the ladder. I was part of the deal.”
“Were you?” I asked. “I didn’t know that.”
“It’s right here.” She stood up, turned, handed me the papers. She’d underlined a section of her contract. “It says I’m to work exclusively for you, and that I am allowed, should you resign your position or otherwise leave the company-”
“Get bounced, you mean?” I asked, loving the way Mallory and Sandy were rapidly losing control of their faces, the way they looked terrified.
“Precisely,” Marla said. “If you leave, my contract opens for renegotiation, and I can walk away from here without a black mark on my record, should I so choose.” She looked at Sandy and Mallory, let the contract fall to the floor. “I so choose,” she said, and she walked back to her desk, pulled a box out from underneath and started packing up.
“You…” Mallory looked like she’d been slapped across the face. “Julie,” she said. “We came. We found you. Sandy and I we…”
“Yeah, and that’s great,” I agreed and felt a momentary twinge of sadness. “But then you shit on me. I’m loyal like a Basset Hound, but everyone’s got an unforgivable line for me. Talk to Billie. She knows something about it.”
“We didn’t kill anyone!” Mallory shouted. “Don’t compare us to her!”
“You killed yourselves, Malllory. You and Sandy both. You signed off when you signed Billie on.” I watched the realization break across her face, watched Sandy tried to hide it on hers. “I didn’t have my name on any of it when Billie got grabbed,” I told them. “Without my permission, she erased me from what we’d been doing, what we’d been fighting for, what you’d taught us to care about. I’m pulling my name out of this mess by my own choice. You two and Billie Fraction deserve each other.”
“Don’t.” Mallory’s voice dropped to a hard, hissing whisper. “You. Compare. Us. To. Her.”
“I’m only doing what you did first,” I shot back. “You dragged her in here. You put your name in the mud with her.”
“Get out.” Sandy ordered, pointing me towards the door. “Out. Now.”
I turned to leave, perfectly happy to leave everything for someone else to sort through.
“Wait.” Mallory said.
I stopped, hand on Marla’s desk. “Yes?” I asked, turning around slowly. Marla stepped to the left of me, taking position at my shoulder.
“You can’t ruin us,” Mallory said. “It wouldn’t be right.”
“It’s business,” I said coolly. “Stand on your own damned feet.”
“What do you want?” Mallory asked, a shrewd look going across her face. “What can we give you?”
I opened my mouth to tell them how far they could shove their bribe, but Marla beat me to the punch. “We want Alligator Girl,” she demanded. “Give us Alligator Girl, and we won’t say one spiteful thing.” She put a hand over my mouth when I tried to cut in. “We’ll say anything that’s true, we’ll give our opinions, but we won’t sling shit.”
“Alligator Girl?” Mallory asked.
“That’s it,” Marla said.
“We want this in writing,” Sandy said.
I pushed Marla’s hand off my mouth. “Really?” I asked. “You really want down on paper that you gave us Alligator Girl so we wouldn’t take you to town for being amoral assholes?”
Sandy took a step forward. Mallory put a hand on her arm. “Gentlemen’s agreement?”
“Call it whatever you want,” I snapped. “Alligator Girl is ours.”
“Take it,” Mallory agreed. “Take it and get out.”
I shouldered past her and Sandy, gathered up the Alligator Girl materials, and pushed them aside again. “Let’s bounce,” I said to Marla. “I’ll buy you dinner.”
“Aren’t you a charmer?” Marla said and linked her arm with mine. We didn’t look back as we walked to the elevator. Marla stopped me as the doors opened. “Be sure,” she said.
I grinned at her. “Don’t have much choice now.”
“There’s always a moment,” Marla said. “There’s always a second to step back and say you’re sorry.”
“Don’t look behind you,” I said. “All we’ve got is straight ahead.”
1970 -- The Return of Comics
The rumors started in February. There was a story on page twelve about a young lawyer wanting to legalize comics again. Police departments were bleeding money, he said. There were better ways to spend taxpayer dollars, he said. He’d been working on a defense since he’d started law school, he said.
Sally called me from her office one day in April. “Do you have the paper?” she asked.
“Of course. Why?”
“They published the name of the lawyer,” she told me. “It’s on page four.”
I flipped to page four, skimmed until I saw the article:
Young Lawyer Going Before Supreme Court for Commies
I looked at the name. Gasped. “I’ve got-”
“Tell him hi,” Sally said. “Tell him we’re hoping.”
I hung up the phone, picked it up, dialed. One ring. Two. It struck me that he may not be home.
“Hello?”
“It’s you!” I yelled. “You’re the lawyer!”
Guy laughed. “I am.”
“The big case you’ve been writing about, this is it, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is.”
I laughed, longer than I meant to. “You could have said, you bastard!” I scolded him.
“I wanted to be sure,” he said. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up.” He chuckled. “I wanted it to be a surprise if it worked,” he said. “I can’t believe it worked.”
“When?” I asked. “When will you go?”
“I’m up in December, couple of weeks before Christmas.”
“What can I do?” I asked. “Give me something to do.”
Guy thought for a moment, humming into the phone. “Nothing,” he said. “I know it’ll make you crazy, but there’s nothing for you to do. It’s all me and my team right now.”
“You have a team?” I laughed again. “How many of them?” I asked.
“There’s three of us,” he said. “I’ve got a Big Three.”
“Guy.” I shook my head, breathed out. “What’s it called?” I asked. “Don’t they all have names, the laws?”
“We’re calling it the Ellis bill,” he said, quiet. “They wanted something else, but I put my foot down.”
“Oh.” I said. “Guy, that’s…”
“It’s what’s needed,” he said. “It’s what’s right.”
We were quiet. I listened to him breathe. “You’ll need something,” I told him. “You’ve got a few months to go. You need anything, you call us, okay? Don’t worry about the time or the day. You call us, and Sally and I will be there.”
“I will,” he promised. “Really.”
We hung up. I dialed Sally. “It’s Guy!” I said.
“I know!” she replied, and we laughed together. “What can we do?” she asked.
“We’re on hold right now,” I told her. “But something’s going to come up,” I said. “It has to.”
“Because you’ll go mad otherwise.”
“That too.”
Sally giggled. “I’m getting waved over. I’ve got to go. Go buy some cheap champagne.”
“That might be bad luck,” I said, “celebrating early.”
“Screw it,” Sally said. “I want cheap champagne.”
I bought a bottle of champagne, a block of Brie, and a pile of crumbly crackers. I considered cheap caviar, but I knew nothing about it. I went home, baked a cake, thought about calling my parents. The phone rang before I could decide what to say.
“La Rocca and Schwartz residence,” I answered.
“Julie?”
I nearly fell backward, Billie’s voice so familiar it nearly made me gasp for air. “This…this is she,” I managed to say.
“It’s Billie.”
I swallowed hard, dug out my determination not to give her an inch. “And?” I asked. “Do you need something?”
“I saw the paper today-”
“I’m throwing a party,” I said. “I’ve got things to do.”
“Jul-”
I hung up before she could finish my name, let the phone ring until it either Billie gave up for the phone disconnected itself. When Sally walked in two hours later, I had the champagne chilled, the Brie warmed, and the crackers on a plate.
“Do I smell cake?” Sally asked as she walked into the kitchen.
“Double chocolate,” I told her. “I figured we can skip the entrée entirely and just have cheese and cake.”
“Absolutely,” Sally agreed. She popped the cork on the champagne, giggled as it flowed over her hands. “Another ten months,” she said. “And we’re back in business.”
“We?” I asked, cutting into the cake.
“Of course ‘we.’ Who else would I work with?” Sally asked.
“I don’t know-”
“Not listening!” Sally yelled over me.
We drank the champagne, ate the Brie and crackers, ate the cake in slices as large as our hands. “What happens,” I asked as we sat on the couch and tried not to fall over. “What happens if it doesn’t work?”
“Shut up,” Sally said, and the ‘p’ slid around her mouth before it landed properly. “We don’t think like that.”
“I think like that.”
“Be quiet, Julie,” Sally said, and she leaned against me, let herself rest a little more weight when I didn’t move. “It’s more hope than we’ve ever had.”
“Sorry,” I said, and I leaned my head against the arm of the couch and dozed off.
Billie tried to call again the next day as Sally and I pretended like we weren’t hungover from the champagne. Sally answered the phone, listened for a moment. “We’re not interested in what you’re selling, Fraction,” she said and slammed down the receiver. We both winced.
“Aspirin,” I muttered, stumbling towards the bathroom, “I need Aspirin.”
We started clipping the stories as we found them in the paper, making a wall of Guy’s rise to fame. “I should put it in a scrapbook,” Sally said one day as she cut out a story from the bottom of the fold on page one. “I could do it in bright pink so he can always find it.”
“Aqua,” I said. “Or dark red.”
“Yellow,” she said. “The color of a baby chick.”
“Stripes,” I replied. “Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black.”
Sally’s eyes lit up. “Perfect.”
She started on it the next night. I smoothed the holes from the thumbtacks and helped her lay them out in chronological order.
Guy called six weeks before. “I’m about to pass out,” he said. “I just realized I’m going to get up in front of the Supreme Court.”
“Sack up,” I ordered him. “Your other option is to wet yourself.”
“You’re about as comforting as a rabid porcupine, Julie,” he told me.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
“Put Sally on. I’ve never talked to her. I bet she’s nicer than you.”
“Sack up,” I repeated and hung up as he laughed.
He called again three days before he went in front of the Court. “Can you come out here?” he asked. “To D.C., I mean.”
“Me?” I asked.
“I’ve got my team, but they’re just here for the law. They’re not here for…”
I waited, listened to him tap his fingers against a table. He must be at his hotel, I realized. He must be sitting in a half-dark room with no one to really understand. “I could bring Sally,” I offered. “She could call in sick.”
“You have to show ID to get into the Court,” Guy said. “Her name’s still on the list.”
“I’ll come alone, then,” I said. “I’ll tell them I’m your sister or something.”
There was a pause, then Guy coughed, an embarrassed sound. I pictured him blushing. “I told them you’re my girl,” he said. “They know I don’t have a sister.”
I blinked, wondered what I’d look like if I could see my own face. “I’m not kissing you hello,” I told him. “Not for anything.”
Guy laughed, relief coloring his tone. “I’ll tell them you’re shy about affection,” he promised. “You’ll show, then?”
“Of course,” I promised. “I’ll get a ticket now.”
I arrived the day before, wearing the closest thing I had to a proper travelling suit. Guy was waiting in the terminal, dressed in a dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a red tie. I stopped short at the sight of it, suddenly picturing him five years before showing up to give me nothing but bad news.
“Julie?” he asked, and his hand was on my arm, curling around my elbow. “You okay?”
I blinked, shook my head, tried to find a smile. “Yeah. You look…” I watched him look himself over, could see he didn’t make the connection. “You were wearing something similar the night you first came over,” I told him. I watched the realization slide across his face, the sudden pinch between his eyebrows. “It’s okay. I just…I try not to think about it a lot, and here you are, looking like a cut out.”
“Should probably warn you,” he said, leading me towards the baggage claim, “most of my wardrobe looks like this now. My being a lawyer and everything.”
I chuckled at that, shook off his hand so I could slide mine into the bend of his elbow. “I’ll manage,” I promised. “Where are we headed?”
“I got you the room next to mine. The boys want to take you out on the town, ply you with cheap alcohol, and get you to tell stories about me.”
“How long have we been dating?” I asked.
“I told them a few years; I told them I met you through some friends.”
I thought about Agent Starling. “Well, close enough I suppose.” I pointed out the square green suitcase with the blue ribbon. “That’s mine.”
Guy hefted it from the carousel, insisted on carrying it to his car. “I’m supposed to do this,” he admonished with a grin. “I’m the boyfriend.”
“What else are you ‘supposed’ to do?” I asked, making sure my air quotes were properly exaggerated.
“Open doors, get the check, help you with your coat, and hold out your chair,” he told me.
“Really?” I asked.
“Sure.” He led the way through the outer doors of the airport, over to short term parking, and stopped in front of a squat, two-door car. “Did you never date a guy?” he asked as he unlocked the trunk and settled my suitcase.
“No one worth dating back home,” I told him. “At least, no more than a soda or something. And then it was Billie.”
“And now?” he asked.
“And now I work all the time,” I answered. “And I don’t have that kind of time.” I pointed a finger before he could argue. “You made me your girlfriend for this trip, and that tells me you don’t have one, either.”
He opened his mouth to argue, laughed, picked me up and swung me around in a hug. “I’ve missed you,” he said as he put me back on the ground. “I know we kind of came together in a hot mess, but damned if I haven’t felt like I’ve lost a great friend since you skittered off to Portland.”
“Me, too,” I told him and let him open my car door. “There’s some cliché about friendships formed in fire.”
“They beat clichés out of you in law school,” Guy told me, leaning against the open car door. “Don’t want you to bore a jury.”
“Come on,” I said and swatted at his knee, “show me where I’m staying.”
It was a large hotel, bright white with picture windows for every room. I had a view of the parking lot. "Classy," I called over my shoulder to Guy as he tossed my suitcase onto the luggage rack.
"Last minute, you're lucky we've got an adjoined room," he told me. He sat in the chair by the bed, opened the drawer on the table and looked inside. "You've got a Bible," he said.
"Oh, good, I'm always running short on those." We grinned at each other. Someone knocked on the door, and Guy was on his feet before I could move.
"That'll be the guys," he told me.
"I'll play the proper lady and freshen up a bit," I said, turning towards the bathroom. I listened to Guy greet two men while I applied fresh lipstick and straightened my hair. When I walked back into the main part of the room, there were two men sitting on the bed. One was tall and slim-shouldered with black hair and a comfortable smile. The other was huge, more than six and a half feet, with hands that completely encased mine when he shook my hand hello. He looked like a boxer.
"Kyle Rayner," Guy said, gesturing to the one with black hair, "and Wayne Kilo."
"Nice to meet you," Kyle said, and his smile fell easily into a smirk. "How many embarrassing stories do you have?"
"I couldn't possibly tell you," I demurred.
"Well, let's have dinner," Wayne said. He offered me his arm. I curled both hands around his elbow. "And I insist on buying the lovely lady a drink."
"This is going to end badly," Guy said. "So badly."
Wayne did, indeed, buy the first round. Kyle insisted on buying the second. Guy insisted on dinner before the third. "Such kind boys," I said and fluttered my eyebrows. I could hear Guy hiding a laugh against the back of his hand. I reached under the table and pinched his knee. The waiter came by, cleared our empties, took the dinner order, and departed again. I looked from Guy to Kyle to Wayne. Kyle and Wayne were watching me. Guy was watching them. "Yes?" I asked Kyle and Wayne.
"You're not his girlfriend," Kyle said.
Guy sat up straighter. "Hey!"
"She's not," Wayne added.
"Hey!" Guy repeated.
I leaned against the table, crossed my arms, gave them both a stern look. "You're both terrible," I said, sounding teasing. "It's quite the claim you're making."
"No pictures," Kyle said, holding up a finger. "No letters."
"Phone calls every couple of weeks," Wayne added. "No guy has a girl who looks like you and doesn't call her at least twice a week."
"And she doesn't live halfway across the country from a guy like him," Kyle finished.
I kept my posture casual. From the corner of my eye, I could see Guy attempting to do the same, but his shoulders were a bit too stiff, his hands a bit too tense. I could see that Kyle and Wayne saw it as well. "Full disclosure," I suggested. "Are you former cops?"
"Yes," Wayne said. Kyle nodded.
"All right." I leaned back, took a sip of my water, pressed my napkin against my mouth to dry the edges of my lips. "I'm not his girlfriend," I confirmed. I poked Guy in the ribs before his shoulders could tighten further. "Give it up," I told him. "You trust them, right?"
"Yeah," Guy said, and his shoulders finally relaxed. He flexed his hands, reached for his glass, took a long drink of water.
"I'm Julia Schwartz," I told them. "Just like he said."
"But you're not his girlfriend," Kyle said.
"No," I agreed. "Not even close." I glanced around the restaurant. It was only half-full, the nearest table of people four tables away. I leaned in close, Kyle and Wayne met me halfway across the table. "You know about Billie Fraction?" I asked.
"Sure," Kyle said, and Wayne nodded.
"I was her girlfriend," I told them. "I was there the day Agent Starling and Officer Gardner arrested her. I was part of it."
Wayne and Kyle looked at one another, looked at Guy. Guy nodded. "Part of it?" Wayne asked, obviously looking for clarification.
"I'm a commie."
They both reeled back a little, leaned back in, Guy's hand on my back was something between a warning and support. "She is," Guy said in an undertone, so low it barely carried across the table.
"Whoa," Kyle said. He shook his head. "Wow."
"Fantastic," Wayne said, and he smiled. "This is great." He shrugged when we all looked at him in surprise. "Imagine," he said to Guy and Kyle, "if we pull this off, if our arguments stick, imagine what it'll do when people find out Julia Schwartz was sitting in the gallery."
"People don't know who I am," I said. "My name's off everything they found at the house in Missouri."
"You've got something, right?" Kyle asked. "Something with your name on it?"
"Sure," I said. "But not where anyone's going to find it anytime soon."
"Well, there's your proof then. Once this is squared away, once we win, you can say you were there when it happened." Kyle grinned. "Hell, it makes our point for us, doesn't it? A law so wasteful and ineffectual that someone involved-"
"Heavily involved," Guy interjected.
"Heavily involved," Kyle amended, "was sitting up front in the gallery that day under the guise of being no one in particular. It proves how completely harmless the whole thing is, proves the waste of time and effort."
"We'll see," Guy said. "Let's not count our win until we have it."
"We've got it," Wayne said.
Wayne turned out to be right. Guy argued free speech and no rise in delinquent behavior, and the opposing side tried to argue safety and propriety.
"The only crime committed here," Guy said to the judges, "are the crimes that had to be committed to prove an unjust law. There was no reason for comics to be outlawed-"
"There was Dr. Wertham's book, Mr. Gardner," one of the justices said. "There were congressional hearings."
"One man wrote one book, your honor," Guy countered. "And while I don't have the numbers in front of me, I'm comfortable stating that congressional hearings rarely lead to laws. But beyond the one man and his one book, there is the fact that his book has proven not to be true. If comics caused delinquency, if they caused unlawful behavior, then there would have been a rise of crime amongst those in the illegal comic business, and they, as I have mentioned before, were only acting illegally because the law took away their first amendment right to believe what they wanted, to say what they wanted, and to read what they wanted as long as those wants did not lead them to violence. And if those wants had led them to violence, there are already good, honorable laws in play that handle those situations.
"We are a nation of free thinkers, your honors. We were founded by men who did not want to be silenced by their government, and who did not want a government that would silence its people. The government overstepped their place when they said comic books-based on the opinions of a single man-should be banned. The government allowed their personal concern about comic books to overshadow their role as lawmakers and rational persons who want to keep their country great and their citizens safe. Safety comes in being able to be honest, hard-working, and upstanding. Take away this law, and you'll have hundreds, maybe thousands, of people happy to live their lives as upstanding citizens because the only reason they have broken the law is because it is unjust and violates the most basic laws outlined in our constitution. We have a first amendment, or we don't. We can't shave off the parts we do not approve and say it is still free speech for all."
The judges deliberated for two days. Guy didn't leave his hotel room. Kyle and Wayne went for food. I sat next to Guy on his bed and put an arm around his shoulders. "It takes or it doesn't," I told him. "You can't say you didn’t try."
"If they turn it down…" Guy said, turned to look out the window. "It'll be another ten or twenty years just to argue it back up the courts."
"You up for it?" I asked, wondering what would happen if he said no.
Guy dropped his head, linked his hands around the back of his neck. "I'll decide after they tell us their answer for now," he told me. "I've got to keep the plan of it in my head, you know?"
"Yeah," I said. "I know." I leaned against his shoulder. We ate in silence when Kyle and Wayne came back with food, stayed silent until Guy's room phone rang, and we were called back to the court.
The Head Justice shuffled papers for nearly two minutes. I was tempted to stand up and asked him to get to it. Looking at the way Guy was tapping his fingers on his knee, I knew he felt it, too.
"You gave us a great deal to think about, Mr. Gardner," the Head Justice said. "And while we disagree with your feelings that those responsible for illegal activity had a right to do so because they felt the law was unjust, we do agree that the first amendment should not be sectioned off into slivers of the right type of speech and the wrong type of speech."
The Head Justice paused, looked at his notes. I wondered if he'd written down his whole speech or if he was just a dramatic person. "We have found, in a 7-2 decision, that the laws banning comic books should be overturned."
I nearly jumped out of my chair. Guy merely straightened up, a grin splitting his face.
"Furthermore," the Head Justice continued, "as of this ruling, we will allow all persons involved in the creation, sale, and distribution of illegal comic books who have not been found linked to other crimes or instances of unlawful behavior to be given a full amnesty." The Head Justice looked up from his notes and looked around the room. "Mr. Gardner, I await your thanks for such a quick response."
"Thank you," Guy said immediately. He stood, straightened his tie, gave the whole panel of justices a wide smile. "Thank you very much, your honors." He waited for them to leave, waited for the door to close, and then he turned to face me and whooped. "We did it!" He jumped the partition between his table and the gallery, picked me up and swung me around. "The Ellis Act is going to be law!" he put me on my feet again. There were tears in his eyes. "It's not the same-"
"Don't," I told him. "She'd have been thrilled." I hugged him tight around the neck, turned to look at Kyle and Wayne who were still on the other side of the partition. "Beers on me," I offered, and they cheered.
There were reporters waiting on the steps when we left, only a dozen or so, but they clambered up the steps, nearly crowded us against a pillar. "Mr. Gardner, what is your reaction to the court's decision in your favor?"
"I'm not surprised at all," Guy said like he hadn't been second-guessing himself during deliberations. "The court understands the importance of free speech, and the justices understand the kind of power the government could have in limiting it."
"What about the amnesty notation?" Someone else asked. "What does that mean, exactly?"
"It means exactly what it says. People who were involved with comics and were not connected to any other illegal activity will be pardoned for what they did during the time that comics were illegal. Conversely, if it's found that persons working on comics during the illegal period were also involved in criminal activities, they will be prosecuted for those activities that are still considered criminal."
"Do you know any of these people?" someone asked from the back of the crowd. "The commies, I mean. Do you know them?"
I squeezed Guy's arm before he could look at me. Behind me, I felt Kyle and Wayne move a little closer.
"I'm here for free speech," Guy said. "And that's my only goal. If you'll excuse me, we're off to celebrate."
A couple of the reporters tried to follow, but Wayne and Kyle loomed until they scurried away. We said nothing until we got back to the hotel. I collapsed on my bed, kicked off my heels, eyed the adjoining door when Guy knocked on the other side.
"I was tempted to tell them who you were," he said when I unlatched the door.
"Best you don't," I replied. "I'd rather wait until the law is officially on the books."
"I figured."
I gestured him in, tossed him the room service menu. "I'm calling Sally," I said. "She probably doesn't know yet."
"Let me tell her," Guy requested, and he toed off his shoes.
"No," I said and pushed him over on the bed so I could sit and reach the phone. "Not until after."
"Superstitious," Guy muttered.
"Cautious," I returned. I dialed the operator, asked to place a long -distance call, listened to the phone ring and wondered if Sally would be home. It was a Thursday, and it was only four-thirty in D. C.
"Hello?" Sally answered, sounding breathless.
"It's me," I told her. "We got it." There was a long pause. "Sally?" I asked.
"Holy hell," Sally muttered. "It was on the radio," she told me. "At work, it was on the radio, and I had to leave. I had-" She cut off, choked. "I didn't-"
"Me neither," I told her. We were silent for a few moments. I listened to her cry, listened to her hit the wall and slide down, could picture her in the kitchen against the striped wallpaper. "Did you hear about the amnesty?" I asked.
"Yeah," she said. She hiccupped, coughed. "Yeah," her voice was stronger. "We can go home."
"Yeah," I agreed. "It'll take a few months, but yeah."
"Wow."
We dropped into silence again. "I should be back in a couple of days," I said finally. "Get some good champagne this time, all right?"
Sally laughed then sniffled. "I'll see what I can find."
We said goodbye and hung up. I stared at the phone for a minute, stared out the window, waited for the euphoria to hit me.
"You okay?" Guy asked.
"I'm…" I stood up, stretched, pulled the pins from my hair. "Tired. I'm tired. I'm going to nap before we get dinner if that's all right."
"Sure. I'll tell Kyle and Wayne." Guy sat up on the bed, swung his legs over, gestured for me to lie down and walked to the adjoining door. "Half an hour all right?"
"It's fine," I told him, and I curled into the warm spot he'd left, closed my eyes, and tried to let myself drift off. Be happy, I thought, but there was a knot in my stomach I couldn't convince to unknot.
The last post will only be about 5,000 words. Shocking, isn't it?