I was a serious journalist, goddammit.
And I could be great at my job, if only Walter would give me the chance.
I took a deep breath and forced the emotion out of my voice. If you were one of the two female journalists working for Walter, the worst thing you could do was show emotion. And God forbid you cry in front of him. That would be like showing fear to a mad dog. Walter would rip out your heart and tell you to grow the fuck up. Then he’d assign you to cover a women’s ping pong match at a local rec center.
Breathing easy, I said, “So, I can’t even call the Kings office and request an interview with Sean Donovan?”
Walter sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. I could smell the whiskey that he put in his coffee each morning, and the cigarettes he’d smoked on his breath all the way across the desk.
“Look, Kate, I’m not being a dick here,” he said, patting his hands in the air like someone being a dick would do. “You can call the Kings all day long. The minute you tell them you’re from Sports Insider Online, they will tell you to go fuck yourself and hang up the phone.”
I scoffed at him and waved a hand toward the window, as if Sean Donovan was standing outside on the ledge. “So, Sean Donovan will talk to Sports Illustrated and People Magazine all day long. He just won’t talk to us.”
Walter shrugged his bushy eyebrows and bobbed his head. “That’s about the size of it. And he only talks game with Sports Illustrated and humanitarian shit with People. Nobody has ever done the kind of story you’re proposing because Sean Donovan wouldn’t agree to it.”
I rolled my eyes. So much for keeping emotion out of the situation. “He’s okay with women posting sex videos with him online, but he wouldn’t agree to let me do an in-depth profile of him?”
Walter leaned forward and planted his elbows on the desk. “Let’s be honest here, Kate. Do you think that Sean Donovan would let anyone shadow him for a week? Off the field?”
“You never know till you ask,” I said weakly.
“Sean Donovan is not going to let anyone follow him home, or follow him around nightclubs and watch him get shitfaced and fuck groupies in the bathroom. Even Sports Illustrated has never been to his house. And he has body guards that keep reporters and paparazzi at bay when he goes clubbing.” He leaned back and scratched his chin. “You’d have to work for Playboy or Rolling Stone or GQ to get that kind of access. And even then, I doubt he would agree to do it. He’d be insane to let the public peek behind that curtain, and I don’t blame him. For Christ sake, the guy’s gotta have a private life.
You wouldn’t want someone poking around your underwear drawer, would you?”
I blinked at him. “My underwear drawer?”
“Figure of speech,” he said, making a sour face. “The point is…”
I stared at my hands in my lap as Walter rambled on. I didn’t look up when something he said sparked an idea in my mind. I just nodded slowly as if I understood and agreed with everything he was saying.
Walter took my nodding head to mean that the discussion was over. He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. He began to rock, welcoming a change in conversation.
He asked, “So, how’s the profile on Serena Williams coming?”
“It’s almost done,” I said, looking up with a forced smile. “I’ll have it to you this afternoon.”
“Excellent,” he said. He brought his hands down and rubbed them together, making a sound like sandpaper on rough wood. “I’ll give it a look and decide where we want to run it. Maybe we can make room for it in the magazine. Would you like that?”
“Sure, that would be great,” I said, getting out of the chair and walking toward the door. I ignored his feeble attempt to pacify me.
Walter was always dangling the chance that your work might make it into the magazine, which was much more prestigious than just getting it on the website.
At this point, I couldn’t give a shit what he did with the piece. He could shove it up his fat ass for all I cared.
As my coworker Drucilla would say, “What-the-fuck-ever, man.”
“Kate,” he called after me. “Keep up the good work.”
“Thanks, Walter, I will,” I said. I waited until I was down the hall before finishing my sentence. “You asshole.”
Sean Donovan
I passed the joint to Leon, the three-hundred-eighty-pound lineman slouched on the couch next to me, and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.
I squinted at the screen and nudged him with my elbow. “Okay, man, watch this catch…”
“I’m watching, motherfucker,” he said with the joint at his lips.