Chapter 15
“You can’t go out on Friday nights, can you?” Patricia asked me on Thursday.
I shook my head. “If Jewish boys did, it wouldn’t be as hard a sell to my mother, but no. The nice Jewish boys are home with their families.” Or at my table after my mother promised them me on a platter, if last week was any indicator of what I had to look forward to.
“Shame,” Patricia said. She lowered her voice to say, “We’re going to Off the Record tomorrow night.”
“What’s Off the Record?”
“Shh.” She perched on the edge of my desk. Then, lowering her voice further: “It’s the bar in the basement of the Hay-Adams Hotel.”
The Manger Hay-Adams was a swanky hotel a few blocks away, known for being the closest hotel to the White House.
“Oh. Yeah, my mother would definitely disown me if I went to a bar, let alone a hotel bar. Like sitting shivah and everything.”
Patricia grinned wickedly. “You sure you can’t sneak out?”
“Not on a Friday night.” I looked at her more carefully. “What’s so special about that bar?”
Leaning in closer, she said, “It’s where the president and vice president pick up girls.”
It was no secret that our young president had a wandering eye.
Well—maybe it was a secret to the first lady.
But everyone else in DC had heard the rumors.
And the vice president, though less young and attractive, was no better.
Then again, most of Capitol Hill had mistresses.
Which meant the first lady likely did know and just turned a blind eye—who wouldn’t, to be the envy of every other woman in the country?
But the two most powerful men in the free world going to a bar?
“Is there an underground tunnel, or do they just walk out of the White House to—you know?”
Patricia laughed. “They don’t go there. But they have men they send out to find the girls. Gladys’s cousin’s friend’s sister supposedly went to the White House from there.”
A tenuous source at best. No journalist worth his salt would take that lead.
I shook my head. “You go have fun. Tell me what happens.”
“Spoilsport,” she said. “You’re going to have to get out from Mama’s skirts someday, you know.”
That was of course the plan. But even when I managed to move out, I didn’t doubt that those Shabbat dinners would remain nonnegotiable.
Saturdays, on the other hand . . . I imagined a future where I slipped on a slinky dress and sipped cocktails with the girls from the office—in the daydream, I was a reporter by then, but I would stay friends with the girls in the typing pool, of course—fending off advances from the most powerful men in the world.
Hey, if I was going to fantasize, might as well make it count.
“Break time is over, Miss Holloway,” Miss Kelly said.
Patricia immediately stood. “Yes, Miss Kelly.” She waited until Miss Kelly had moved on to chastise another typist, then rolled her eyes at me. I smiled back. But it faded quickly as I realized the article I was about to start was a Jack Fields piece.
Miss Kelly was still stalking around the newsroom like a panther, so I couldn’t very well return it to the board and grab a different one, which I would have likely done had she been in her office, so I began to type.
His leads really were weak. This one only had three of the five W’s and one H. I had been taught to use at least four and always start with who or what. He started with when. If we were strictly following the inverted pyramid, when was never the most important information.
I looked around again. Out of all the girls in the typing pool, he wouldn’t know who typed his. And he’d have the least grounds to say anything about edits after the stunt he had pulled.
While I disliked the idea of helping him, especially because he would get credit for solid writing, I was bored.
It was only my second week at the newspaper, I had done two separate jobs now, and I was already tearing my hair out.
My fingers itched to fix the article. To make it sparkle.
Miss Kelly walked past me on her way back to her office and shut the door forcefully.
Why not? I thought. It was a healthier way to pass the time than smoking.
I pulled the sheet of paper from the roller, inserted a new one, and began again.
“Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev announced yesterday that . . .”
I finished the article, took the last sheet from the typewriter, and read through my handiwork.
Much better, I thought. I had rewritten the lead, tightened up several weak paragraphs, and rearranged a couple of quotes to better fit the inverted pyramid and improve flow.
He would know it was me, and I didn’t really want him hanging around again.
But for fifteen minutes, at least I wasn’t bored.
After walking it to the box to go upstairs, I selected another article from the board. I skimmed it on the way back to my desk. Insanely dry. The vice president had given a speech about the space program, and he wasn’t the dynamic speaker that the president was.
Sitting back at my desk, I rolled a new sheet into the typewriter, and my fingers began to fly across the keys, transforming the editors’ markings into print-ready copy.
Then I stopped. A line in the article jumped out at me.
The Texas Democrat.
Texas.
Havana is with Texas.
What if that wasn’t a place but a person?
Had the vice president secretly gone to Cuba?
After the Bay of Pigs debacle last year, it seemed unlikely that he would be welcomed there, but maybe there was a peace deal in the works?
Was it possible that Castro could be swayed to the side of the United States and not the Soviets?
No. That was too far-fetched even for fiction, let alone a newsroom.
But I had a feeling I was close. There were plenty of Texas politicians, but the vice president was the most prominent of them. What could the “mass goal” be if it wasn’t fixing the situation with Cuba?
Then again, the voice had sounded Russian. Their version of fixing things seemed to be a lot different from mine.
“You in there?” Carol asked, breaking my train of thought.
“I’m sorry—what?”
“Lunch,” she said. “I asked you twice.”
I squinted at the clock across the room. “Yes.” I left the article on my desk. “Where do you want to go today?”