“And?” Salem finally says.
“And what?”
“I know you’re ‘involved’ with her, Hawk. In case you missed it, I am not only an investigative journalist; I am also a person with eyeballs. I assume what you mean is that you’ve slept with her or something close—don’t give me that look; we’re both adults here—but the truth is, you’ve been involved with her since she first opened her front door to us.”
Obviously, I can’t argue with that.
“You see the problem, then.”
She shrugs as the waiter sets down her drink, murmuring her thanks to him before turning back to me. “Not really.”
“Not really?” I echo, the anger and confusion I’ve felt at Salem all day slipping into my tone. “What is going on with you, Salem? You show up here this morning and drag us all to that institute like you wanted it to be some kind of clever surprise. And the surprise turns out to be you lying to a source? Now you’re saying you don’t care that I’ve fall—” I cut myself off, my ears heating, especially at the way Salem’s mouth curves up knowingly. “That I’m in a personal relationship with one?”
She takes an indulgent sip of her drink, looking bored.
“I had a lot of time in the hospital to do research. But not a lot of time to text or call or to write you an email to tell you what I found out about Kirtenour. Which, I’m thinking, turned out to be fine, since you seemed to make good use of your days. Or nights.”
“Jesus, Salem.”
I push my drink away from me, leaning back in my chair. When we started this trip, I could have never imagined speaking to her this way—in frustration, in censure. But she and I have changed, too, both of us seeing parts of each other we probably didn’t plan on. She’s not just my boss anymore, and I’m not just her employee.
“Nothing I’ve done with Jess in the days since we’ve been off were about progress, or making use of anything. You need to understand me. I am not in this with her because I want something out of her.”
“Well. That’s hard to say for sure, isn’t it?”
I stare at her, shocked by being on this side of her coolness, her self-assuredness. She says things in a way that makes me doubt my own truth. I want to say,No, it’s not hard to say, but when she’s looking at me this way—itishard. It’s hard to untangle the pieces of me and Jess that exist outside of this story.
It’s hard to be certain about whether there are any.
“Quit talking to me like I’m a source,” I say.
She swallows a gulp of her drink, still unbothered. She shrugs. “You could be. It’s an angle.”
I can’t believe how far afield of the plan I am.
“An angle?” My voice sounds like it’s being dragged across pavement.
“Look, Hawk, I respect you. I think you’re good at this work. But you’re green at this work. You want to disclose to me that you’re in a relationship with someone we’re hoping to talk to for our story, fine. But you know as well as I do that we’re not out here exposing government corruption or some kind of billion-dollar corporate coverup. I could open my podcast app right now and show you ten shows—popularshows—where the host has a stake, where the hostisthe angle.My parents raised me in a cult; here’s our story. My older brother ran off to live in the Alaskan bush; here’s my twelve-episode series about what happened to him. Ten years ago a girl from my high school was murdered; I’m a guy with basic podcast software and here’s who I think did it.”
She pauses, and I know—Iknowit’s for effect.
It’s to make sure I have a second to register what she’s going to say before she says it.
“My best friend died, and I blame football, a sport I also played for years. Here’s why.”
“Jesus,” I mutter.
“None of this”—she waves a hand, gesturing at the air around us—“passes whatever smell test you learned about in J-School, I can promise you that. I don’t care that you’re in love with Jess Greene, Hawk. I care about whether she’s going to talk for my story. So, is she?”
I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything, not yet. My rib cage is a pinball machine; Salem’s words a cold and polished steel ball, banging into the flashing, reactive pieces of me. If only it’d stay still long enough, I could see my distorted reflection in its shiny silver surface.
Not that I’d want to at this particular moment.
“She is, then?” Salem says, my silence all the answer she needs.
I grasp desperately at the plan.
“She’s considering it,” I say, which was true last night, and not as true today. Today, obviously, she’s more than considering it.
