Rubout Page 6

  She looked at me with pity and patted my hand, a rare gesture for a tough woman like Georgia. “The Gazettes glory days are dead and gone. The paper’s old and tired. It’s had a monopoly for too long. It forgot how to fight, except with its own employees. Now all the consultants in the world can’t turn it around. You know what our former mayor said about the Gazette?”

  Probably something unprintable. The ex-mayor was as foul-mouthed as Georgia. The two were old cronies, who liked to sip scotch and swap city hall stories in his law offices.

  “Hizzoner said ‘That newspaper couldn’t sell whores on a troop ship.’”

  There was a resounding crash as the pink lady dropped my teacup on the floor.

  They looked like a golf foursome ready to tee off, which I guess was the perfect illustration of corporate casual. The big four at the City Gazette were sipping coffee and waiting to embark on their Voyage of Discovery in Conference Room ? at the Chesterfield Executive Center.

  The publisher was surrounded by his three courtiers: Simpson Tolbart the chief operating officer, Charlie the managing editor, and Roberto the city editor. I could tell that the publisher was the biggest bigwig in this group. He was wearing the kind of gaudy golf clothes only really rich guys can wear without anyone laughing out loud. And loud was the operative word. His pants were bright green and his golf shirt was canary yellow. Simpson, the Gazettes number-two man, looked only slightly less ridiculous in yellow-and-green plaid pants and a pale-yellow golf shirt. Charlie wore a red Polo shirt that matched his nose and red plaid pants. Roberto, the lowest man on this big chiefs’ totem pole, was wearing the most normal clothes: a powder-blue golf shirt, khaki pants, and penny loafers. His face was fixed in an obsequious smile. As the publisher and Simpson talked and Charlie nodded sagely, Roberto’s head bobbed up and down in agreement like one of those toy dogs in a car window.

  Georgia, looking ten years younger in a sea green Lacoste outfit, waved me over to her group. A breakfast buffet had been set out for us. There were mounds of strawberries and melon slices, miniature bagels on silver trays, iced bowls of whipped butter, cream cheese, and strawberry cream cheese, and huge urns of coffee, decaf, and hot water for tea. I poured myself a cup of decaf and sugared it heavily to ward off all that healthy food. It was the ungodly hour of seven-thirty on a Saturday morning, and I felt awkward in my pink golf shirt and khaki pants. Normally I’m a Donna Karan creature. Wearing this preppie stuff made me feel like I was forced to talk slowly in a language I didn’t understand well.

  “You’ve met Tucker Gravois,” Georgia said, indicating a mild-looking gray-haired type with not one but two old St. Louis names. The man sounded like a street intersection. He also sounded like old money, which you would want for a vice president of business operations in St. Louis, where connections counted. Tucker was a pretty decent guy for a business type, and we always had congenial conversations when we met in the Gazette elevators.

  Next to him was our very own Steel Magnolia, Yvonne “Just Call Me Vonnie” Cutte, our multimedia director. We exchanged curt nods. Vonnie saved the honeyed Carolina accent for the men. I’d tangled with her when she did a promotional ad for my column. She complained to the Gazette photographer that the picture he took of me was “too sexy.” I found out later from my friend Tina that Vonnie had the same complaint about her promo photo. Tina looked good and photographed even better. Imagine Whitney Houston with a computer. Tina had star quality. Vonnie scuttled Tina’s ad, saying the budget was blown. Tina didn’t care. She didn’t need the limelight. But we both wondered if little old Vonnie had her own private campaign to make the Gazette women writers look like schoolmarms.

  Those were the principal members of the Voyage Committee, along with four eager young yups from the business side, who were named Brittany, Courtney, Scott, and Jeremy. I couldn’t tell them apart, because they all had short blond hair and said yes a lot. They stood in a little covey near the coffee urn.

  Promptly at 8:00 A.M. a ponytailed guy in work boots, blue jeans, and a chambray shirt arrived. “Good morning,” he said with irritating chipperness. “I am your Voyage Captain Jason.”

  “I’m getting that sinking feeling already,” I whispered to Georgia. She shut my mouth with a laser glare.

  “Before we begin,” chirped Jason, “I have a little gift that symbolizes our Voyage of Discovery.” He pulled out a big cardboard box from under a skirted buffet table. Then he presented each of us, starting with the publisher, with a nylon navy backpack with the Voyage of Discovery ship logo on it. He handed them out reverently, as if they were platinum-plated.

  “We don’t want you carrying old baggage on this journey,” Jason said, smiling earnestly. “We want you to make fresh, new discoveries about yourselves and your colleagues. That’s what our backpack with the special ship logo represents.”

  “I thought it represents the fact that the paper is totally at sea,” I whispered to Georgia. She kicked me. Hard.

  We were sitting around a big dark walnut conference table. The room was done in soothing mauve and gray. Jason spurned the walnut podium. He stood at the head of the table, hands in his jeans pockets. He looked at ease yet in command. The publisher was hanging on to his words as if they were solid gold. Considering what this was costing the Gazette, I guess they were.

  “As your captain on this voyage, I must warn you. You’re in for some heavy weather. We’ve done some preliminary research, and the Good Ship Gazette is lost in stormy waters. It’s leaking circulation faster than ever before in its history, particularly in the West County suburban corridor, which is the most desirable area for the advertisers. We’re losing women readers and we aren’t bringing in young readers. Our analysis, plus the results of several years of surveys and focus groups, shows that readers feel the paper is lacking in structure and identity and that it is elitist, arrogant, and out of touch with the community.”

  Hmm. Maybe Voyage Captain Jason wasn’t all wet after all. So far, I’d agreed with everything he’d said.

  “Our internal surveys of the staff were even more disturbing. We found a staff that is distrustful of management and one another. Section heads refuse to assist each other. Staff members are encouraged to dislike their colleagues. This is not a good working atmosphere, people. This is not a sharing and caring environment where creativity can be nurtured. These kinds of conflicts can sink a corporation.”

  Way to go, Captain. Everything you said would float my boat.

  “It’s going to take a lot of work to get the Good Ship Gazette back on course,” he said. “It’s going to take the cooperation of you.” He pointed dramatically at our publisher.

  “And you and you,” he said, pointing at the two money men, Tucker and Simpson.

  “And you and you and you and . . .” He made sure we all got the point.

  “We need the high Cs here—Cooperation and Creativity. And to help develop these two vital life-enhancing and business-building qualities, we are going to have our first exercise in teamwork. Francesca, what do you think would be a good, fun learning game for Gazette people to play? Choose a popular game, now.”

  Game? I didn’t play games. Wait a minute, what was that game I used to play with my suburban cousins? It was about buying and selling. Was it Scrabble? No, it was . . .

  “Monopoly!” I said brightly. There was an awkward silence. Shit. Bad choice. Some said the Gazette already played Monopoly. The city’s two other daily newspapers were dead.

  Georgia came to my rescue. “Poker is a good learning game,” she said. “I learned it when I covered city hall, and it taught me everything I needed to know about people.”

  It was just the right thing to say. “I heard the mayor lost his shirt playing with you,” Tucker said, smiling.

  “Not true, it wasn’t strip poker,” said Georgia, and everyone laughed. I hoped my Monopoly remark was forgotten.

  “Those are good games,” said Jason, sounding like he was talking to a gifted kindergarten class. “But I
was thinking of something a little more basic. A way of going back to our beginnings, when we first learned to play.” He reached again under the table skirt and pulled out a giant box of . . . Tinkertoys.

  “I’m going to divide you into teams of four. Each team will build something that represents their concept of the Gazette. You’ll have twenty minutes. Sit on the floor now. We need to start building from the ground up. I realize some of you must be thinking ‘What does that silly man have in mind? These are kids’ toys!’”

  I was thinking something similar, only not so clean.

  “I promise you. This only looks like a childish exercise. It is actually a childlike activity. That is an important difference. This is the best way I know to teach you teamwork,” Jason said.

  “I swear to God, Lyle, we actually sat on a conference room floor and played with Tinkertoys for two hours yesterday. What was that idiot thinking?”

  “Which idiot?” asked Lyle.

  “Good question. I meant Voyage Captain Jason, but the publisher sat there and lapped up that foolishness. That’s one emperor who doesn’t realize he’s running around naked.”

  Naked. Yes. I was distracted by the hunky young man who ran past us in Tower Grove Park, with teeny shorts and tons of muscles. I’d always loved St. Louis’s fall days, and this one was particularly beautiful, even without the nearly naked jogger. Most of the trees still had their leaves, and this year they were a blaze of fiery red and gold. Tower Grove was a nineteenth-century Victorian walking park, a perfect place for lovers to stroll and talk on a warm Sunday afternoon. We passed the lily ponds, paused to watch a giggling bride and groom pose for pictures near the fake Roman ruins, and then walked up to a little gazebo with a roof like a Chinese pagoda.

  And all the while we sampled this sun-drenched beauty, I griped about the Voyage Committee. It was one reason I’d agreed to see Lyle when he called. I missed talking to him after I flounced out of his place last Saturday. He was so smart, and he listened.

  “I can see why you’re discouraged,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like this group is going to solve the Gazettes problems. And the paper does have problems. Do you know my students call it News Lite, because they don’t think it has anything worth read-mg?

  “No, I didn’t. I suspect the paper will be even emptier when this committee gets through with it. This is going to be a long voyage,” I said with a sigh. “And besides these Voyage Committee meetings, I still have to write my column and do that special feature on Sydney Vander Venter. And if I write about Sydney, I have to go to one of my least favorite areas in St. Louis—Ladue.”

  “Ladue is an attractive older suburb,” Lyle replied. He wasn’t from St. Louis, so he didn’t have my built-in attitude. “All those big trees and big houses.”

  “And small-minded people,” I said.

  “Oh, come on. Not everyone in Ladue is a snob. Don’t you have some friends who live there?”

  “Yeah, I like them. But I still can’t stand the place.”

  “Why?”

  “I hate the rich.”

  “You do not. I’m rich. You don’t hate me.” No. But right now, I didn’t exactly like him, either. When he stood there and smiled like that, I wanted to slap him. I was in a foul mood after spending yesterday on that Voyage Committee.

  “Come on, tell me why you hate the place,” Lyle said, and punctuated his taunt by kissing me on the nose. I swatted him away, like a pesky fly.

  “It’s insular. It’s stupid. It’s smug. There’s a whole Ladue attitude. They think they can run the city and do whatever they want and they don’t have to follow the rules like the rest of us.”

  “Those are prejudices,” Lyle said.

  “Based on fact. Remember when I did that story on the county health department’s vector control service—we call it Rat Control in the city? Well, a woman called up and asked what she could do about the night squirrels. Vector control said they didn’t know what night squirrels were.

  “ ‘My gardener told me about them,’ the Ladue woman said. ‘They only come out at night. They look like squirrels with long skinny tails.’

  “ ‘Those are rats, ma’am,’ said vector control.

  “ ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘We don’t have rats. We live in Ladue.’”

  “A funny story, I admit,” Lyle said. “But still not enough evidence. Why don’t you start with some research on Ladue?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go to the downtown library tomorrow and find the facts to back me up.”

  “At least you’ll know why you hate the place.”

  Some barflies get thirsty at the whiff of an old-time bar. There’s something about the smell of stale beer and Pine-Sol, and I do feel at home in a saloon. But I lust for libraries. They were my home away from home. My parents argued a lot. I would sneak off to the library and hide out there in the silence with my peaceful books. I liked the suburban library with the blond bookcases, the big glass windows, and that peculiar greenish aquarium light. The librarians wouldn’t let anyone talk to me or hurt me. I’d sit there, feeling safe and protected, hoping my parents would quit fighting by the time I got home. If the bedroom door was locked and I heard their bed-springs squeaking, I knew they were making up and everything would be fine in the morning. If they were still arguing, I would sneak upstairs to my room, shut the door, and read my books on my bed until I finally fell asleep. I’m surprised my ribs didn’t cave in, sleeping on some of those fat tomes.

  After my parents died and I moved in with my grandparents in the city, I hung out at the library near my grandparents’ city store. The Carpenter Branch Library smelled dark, old, and mellow. It was different, but I liked it. My favorite, though, was the main library downtown. It was built in 1912, when St. Louis was still a mighty river city and wanted a book palace for its people. Cass Gilbert, the same guy who designed the U.S. Supreme Court, designed an opulent library. Every time I went in the place, I took my own tour. The main room was oval and done in a warm, soft pinkish gray marble. It had molded plaster ceilings, a huge oak counter, and carved church pews to sit in while you waited for your books to be brought from the stacks.

  Today I wanted History and Genealogy, another grand room with a ceiling modeled after an Italian palace. It had helpful librarians. I called and told them what I was looking for, and they assembled everything they had on Ladue. I took the pile of books and files and sat at a long oak table, next to a husband and wife who were researching their family tree.

  The librarians dug up good stuff. I couldn’t wait to tell Lyle what I found. He wanted facts on why I didn’t like Ladue, I’d give him facts. Hah. Old and new, Ladue was one strange place. It had no public pool, no tennis courts, or recreational facilities. If you wanted those, you had to join a country club. Ladue had the highest concentration of private clubs in the area, places that excelled at keeping more people out than they let in. They included the St. Louis Country Club, the Log Cabin Club, the Bogey Golf Club, the Deer Creek Club, Old Warson Country Club, and the Racquet Club Ladue.

  Ladue believes we’re just jealous, which we are. They also say Ladue isn’t as rich as everyone thinks. Huntleigh Village, a tiny St. Louis suburb of 392 people, has a median family income of more than $135,000 a year. Ladue families, on the average, scrape by with around $121,000. Ladue has 108 people living below the poverty level. Huntleigh has none. Not one person. So why don’t we pick on Huntleigh? Why aren’t we calling it elitist and snobbish?

  Because Ladue has this attitude, see. It has more to do with Ladue minds than Ladue money. Ladue likes to sue the socks off people—for reasons that would have the rest of us shrugging and turning away.

  Only Ladue would sue a respectable cohabiting couple, because the city had a rule that more than one family couldn’t live in the same house. Ladue won that lawsuit, too. Took it all the way to the Supreme Court. My hairdresser friend told me the suit had a curious outcome: a gay couple living in Ladue were worried they were next. So the older one adop
ted the younger. They now commit incest, with the blessing of the city.

  Then Ladue turned around and sued Margaret Gilleo, a woman who was worried about war. She put up a yard sign that said, SAY NO TO WAR IN THE PERSIAN GULF, CALL CONGRESS NOW. The sign was the size of a FOR SALE sign, but Ladue carried on like she was advertising X-rated videos. Gilleo thought she was guaranteed free speech. She challenged Ladue’s sign ordinance in federal court—and the ordinance was struck down as unconstitutional. Ladue then adopted a new sign ordinance, which wasn’t much different from the first. And Margaret taped a sign the size of a piece of typing paper in a window that Said, FOR PEACE IN THE GULF.

  For that modest wish, Ladue sued her all the way to the Supreme Court. Ladue lost that one. Some Ladueites complained to the press that the sign was tacky. Evidently, it was not tacky to have Americans die in the desert. But it was tacky to mention the problem in a Ladue yard.

  That was Ladue for you—so self-absorbed in petty city politics, it forgot there was a world out there, where people died. My Ladue friends keep telling me “We’re not all like that. Some of us are normal,” and I believe them. Because otherwise, Margaret Gilleo wouldn’t have fought the good fight for free speech. She would have put her sign away and shut up.

  Some people say this rash of lawsuits is a recent thing. But it’s not. Ladue has been getting itself in stupid public scrapes for years. My favorite example was back in the 1940s when Ladue had a ghost library. St. Louis County wanted to set up a county library district and tax everybody ten cents per hundred dollars of assessed valuation. But some municipalities in the county already had thriving libraries, so they were exempt. Ladue did not have a library—until it looked like it would have to pay that ten-cent tax. Then people quickly donated a bunch of old books, and Ladue got a subscription to Life magazine. These intellectual treasures were kept at a fire station. Ladue said it had a library and voted to tax themselves one cent to maintain it, and save nine whole pennies. Except the courts didn’t let Ladue get by with it. This cheap trick was labeled “a new low in political subterfuge” in the newspapers back then. Ten years later, Ladue donated its ghost library to the prisoners at the county jail.