21. Walter
Walter
FIVE YEARS AGO
COLUMBIA, Mo.—“Burns!”
Will Wineke, city editor for the campus paper, was an old-school newshound with a graying walrus mustache who didn’t believe in coddling student reporters.
“In my office,” he barked, not waiting to see if Walter would respond to the summons. When Wineke called, the newspaper staff jumped.
“What can I do for you?” Walter asked from the doorway, notebook and pen at the ready.
“Still looking for a job?” He lowered his voice slightly from full roar, but it was still loud enough to alert half of Walter’s colleagues to the fact that he had yet to find postgraduation work.
“Correct,” Walter replied, ignoring the clench of anxiety in his gut.
On top of a stagnant job market, he’d further narrowed his options by ruling out any and all outlets owned by Johnson Media.
Waiting and hoping for however many months it took to find paying work might be an option for someone with no student loans (or unlimited access to the Bank of Mom and Dad), but Walter didn’t have that cushion.
He thought back for the umpteenth time to the decisions that had brought him to this pass.
How different would his life be right now if he hadn’t walked away from that fellowship?
At least he still had his principles—if not much else.
Wineke eyed him like he was waiting for Walter to crack and change his story. Before Walter could break into a sweat, his boss grunted.
“Hildy Johnson.”
Walter choked on his own spit. “What?”
“That answers that.” It sounded like Wineke was talking to himself more than Walter.
Walter shook his head, lost.
“You know her.”
It wasn’t phrased as a question, but Walter felt compelled to nod anyway.
Maybe that was going to be his claim to fame for the rest of his life.
The first line of his obit would be: Once spent a week in Hildy Johnson’s orbit.
Had she mentioned him to someone? Could Hildy possibly be thinking of offering him a job?
That would be preposterous … unless her conscience had finally kicked in.
“You’re a good reporter.” The heavy exhale that followed clued Walter in that there was an asterisk after that compliment. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t mention this, but I know you need the work. And you have that connection with the Johnson girl.”
Had a connection, Walter silently corrected. Past tense. But he was too curious to interrupt.
“Might be a stepping stone to something better.” It sounded like Wineke was trying to convince himself. He fixed Walter with a penetrating look. “You follow any of the gossip sites? Celebrity news, who’s dating who, that kind of thing.”
It had to be a trick question. If Walter said yes, he’d look frivolous for wasting time that would have been better spent on hard news. But if he said no, would he disqualify himself from whatever job-adjacent possibility might be in the offing?
“I’m aware of them,” Walter replied, trying to thread the needle.
Another grunt. “Derek Gratz is looking for a stringer.”
It took Walter a second to connect the dots. Derek Gratz as in Gratz on That, an online tabloid with enough clout that even mainstream news outlets paid attention to their feed.
“And you thought of me?” Walter wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or offended.
“It’s about the Johnson kid.”
Ah. He should have realized Hildy wouldn’t come looking for him. This was a case of her life crashing into his, again, like an asteroid. “How did you know? That I knew her.”
“Old friend at the Pachner Institute. He told me the two of you worked together a couple summers ago.”
Walter nodded. It was technically true.
“You want to talk to this Gratz guy?” Wineke asked, clearly ready for this conversation to be over.
“Okay.”
His editor slid a piece of paper across the desk. “Call him at this number.”
It had never occurred to Walter that the founder of Gratz on That might look like someone’s dad.
He’d expected a pitchfork or devil horns, but when they met via Zoom, Walter’s laptop displayed a grainy image of a pasty forty-something with wire-rimmed glasses.
He could have gone undercover at any midsize IT department.
“Think of it as a chance to catch up with an old friend,” his potential employer said, several minutes into their call. To hear him tell it, spying on Hildy would be easy, totally legal, and fun—as if Walter was joining a new gym.
He hesitated. It wasn’t that the work sounded shady—though it did.
Or at least, it wasn’t only that. Yet even as he asked follow-up questions to show he cared about things like journalistic ethics, he was mostly thinking about Hildy.
A sense of inevitability settled over him.
Walter had never fully believed their story was over.
All these years, part of him had been waiting for some kind of postscript.
In the face of her silence, he could only assume that summer had been a joke to her, a silly exercise she put up with because her family expected it.
Like sailing lessons and horseback riding, or whatever else her type of people considered basic life skills.
She certainly hadn’t cared about Walter, except as a means to an end.
Which should have made it easy to forget her.
Except it still hurt. He had questions only she could answer.
How was it possible to like someone so much when she represented everything he was against?
Big money, class privilege, nepotism—Hildy had the cheat codes to life.
And what did it say about Walter that he’d swallowed her act hook, line, and sinker?
Of course she wanted to write an uplifting story about a wedding.
Struggle had no place in Hildy’s life. She probably thought the world worked that way for everyone.
He wondered if she was still majoring in journalism, or if that had been a passing fancy.
If he took this job, Walter supposed he would find out. When he took this job.
The trick would be thinking of her as an assignment rather than a person he’d once known.
It helped that she looked like a stranger these days, according to the pictures he’d seen online of Hildy cruising the party circuit.
High school Hildy had been pretty enough to fluster him, but still in the realm of normal.
Version 2.0 gleamed with money and polish.
Everything about her had a faint sheen, from her curls to her clothes.
He would never have dreamed of befriending this Hildy, any more than he’d approach a movie star on the street and ask them to hang out.
And now a celebrity was what she’d become—someone whose comings and goings were of interest to total strangers.
He should have found it validating to see her living that high-society life: more proof he’d been right.
She wasn’t serious about the work because she didn’t have to be.
Hildy’s first allegiance would always be to people like her, with money and connections. So why did he feel so disappointed?
Except disappointment wasn’t quite right.
He wasn’t sitting on a mountaintop, judging her behavior.
This touched Walter too, an acid prickling in his stomach that tasted more like regret or embarrassment.
Maybe he was still kicking himself for believing in a different Hildy.
Or maybe he was ashamed of the part of him that still felt pathetically excluded from her world.
Because the assignment wasn’t just Hildy.
Derek Gratz wanted someone to report on what he described as the “junior C-suite set,” the pampered and hard-partying young offspring of corporate titans.
Find out where they are and who they’re with.
Name names, because apparently there were people out there who desperately wanted to know how trust funders were spending their parents’ money.
Walter would have called it ridiculous if he wasn’t just as curious—in this one instance.
For him, it would be like pressing his nose to the glass of a fancy department store, staring at all the luxury items he could never afford—although it wasn’t things he coveted so much as access.
A foot in the door. He wanted to be someone you wouldn’t easily ignore because a more important person came along.
As opposed to a nobody.
If that meant playing the hanger-on, lurking in the shadows just beyond the spotlight, he could check his ego for a chance to work his way up the ladder.
It wasn’t how he’d imagined starting his career, but it was a chance.
Gratz on That drew more traffic than all but the biggest metropolitan dailies, and Walter wouldn’t have to wait years to see his byline.
Plus he needed money for rent and groceries.
And was it really any worse than what Hildy had done to him?
Even as he told himself these things, the thrum of excitement in his blood said liar.
He thought of the last time he’d seen her, when she walked out of a room as soon as he entered, as if she didn’t want to breathe the same air. Walter had been too afraid to follow, choosing instead to torture himself with what-ifs. This time, he wouldn’t back down.
“I’ll do it,” he said.