Worthy Of This Great City Page 18

  I returned the next week, feeling ridiculously like a regular, and once again found myself utterly engrossed by the municipal madness, the barely discernable currents moving inside the process, hiding behind the ritual. The endless theatrics, the vital issues stripped of reason and content, transformed into voracious mutants and loosed on the city.

  “Make it a letter to the editor,” Thom suggested, and nodded toward a folded copy of our better daily. “They’ll print it.” So I pretended to think about that before racing to follow his advice, and presto my first Council piece, albeit drastically reduced, was published in our prestigious daily to a pretty agreeable reception from my immediate circle. Then subsequently two others, all a little irresponsible in retrospect, nowhere near as acute as I thought at the time but still decent. One discussed a flood of building permits for a derelict South Philly neighborhood, another City Council itself, its salaries and staff and perks. I’m positive Thom influenced this initial success although I don’t know it for a fact. Next I scored an essay in the Sunday magazine, a longer and much more serious piece on a particularly vicious and crucial senate campaign. All this seemed to happen at once, leaving me exhilarated. That weekend supplement became my first regular organ, sporadically running my dissections of various political issues and antics that almost always included reports from Council, cynical but careful articles that aimed to separate the valid and possible from the dubious and self-serving.

  Although I knew perfectly well newspapers were dying.

  For all its redundant nonsense, Council was fascinating once you learned the rules and knew how to interpret the emotions and intent behind the tired routine and outsized dramatics. You started to follow the plot. And you immediately knew that, whatever the shifting alliances and altering perspectives and competing egos, Thom Askew indisputably owned the star turn. His almost offensively charismatic presence compelled everyone’s attention, covert or outright. His angular, incorrect stance, his toothy verbal acrobatics coupled with his open delight in his own cleverness – somehow it all illogically radiated charm no matter what side of the argument you were on, and the result was a predictable surge of volatile energy whenever he took the stage, baroque emanations of resentment or infatuation.

  And I found myself converted into a grudging partisan of contemporary journalism. Truth and justice, baby! Two old friends discovered in a highly unlikely quarter. Now, at that point in my meandering search for a real career the logical next step would be a job at some dreary suburban franchise newspaper or the surviving daily of a distant minor city, there to hone my nascent skills and write myself the kind of creditable resume that eventually buys you into the big time. Instead Thom, now a firm acquaintance if not an intimate, intervened a second time. I think he appreciated my variety of twisted wit because it reminded him of his own iconoclastic youth. Like me he always loved to mock assholes.

  “You don’t want to bury yourself in some backwater until there’s nothing left of you but a short skeleton with a gigantic shnoz.” And he arranged an introduction to the Editor-in-Chief of one of our two throwaway weeklies. We had them then, actual hardcopy newsprint out on the street. Carl Shurz, an immense, broad, doughy-faced individual in his forties, engulfed my hand in his own wide paw and invited me aboard on a part-time contributor basis, happily mistaking my satiric prose as complementary to his own magazine’s scrupulously hipster persona. By the time I was confidently finding my way through the refigured downtown office corridors I was a staff writer, covering Council and local politics still, but now it was getting to be serious business and hard work, and there was my name on the occasional pretentious artsy-edgy cover, a photograph in grainy black-and-white in those ubiquitous corner boxes. Some 80,000 issues strong featuring my comprehensive coverage of another confounding crises for polite suburban commuters to consume along with their ethnic restaurant openings and experimental theater reviews.

  During this transitional period I continued on at my doc review job, getting corporate scum out of trouble, paying the rent, paying down the student loans. Bluffing off my journalistic deficiencies while diligently widening my area of expertise to include the administration and party power brokers and other forces permitting or preventing events. I gained a hundred times better understanding of the way the city worked, of how individuals or groups navigated the creaking and corrupt system and what it demanded of them in return and what they were willing to pay in order to achieve some measure of sustainability or even a toehold on posterity. Then there were the potent loyalties rising from the wards and the unions and the community coalitions – all these elected or appointed functionaries, all those organizations, the whole top-heavy mechanism that long ago separated out from a more refined, moneyed element unwilling to soil its hands with the mundane business of city government. I acquired my first precious sources.

  I was searching for America, I guess. I once read how arguably the greatest line in American literature is from Huckleberry Finn, where he says, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell.” That decision encapsulates a uniquely American kind of freedom, but the price is being honest about it, owning it. Few people I encountered were paying up, and that more than anything made me furious.

  For my efforts I was paid, if not generously then sufficiently well enough to provide a spurious sense of security and temporarily dull my habitual cosmic angst. I was learning almost too much on a daily basis, rewriting my guts out, transforming my little universe while making myself known, and it was pretty fucking amazing.

  While the weekly’s offices were merely utilitarian, the personnel projected the proper urban cool; they were so hyperconscious and competitive I eventually overlooked their youthful disdain, it was so pitiful. The full-time side, the business and editorial people, were less constrained by this tension, but the occasional contributors with dead-end jobs elsewhere embodied all the latest in fashion, futility, and irony. Setting trends, to hear them tell it: responsible for that scarf worn just so on the runway, for making the reputation of that new Thai cafe. Coming in when they didn’t have to, conferring over the latest New Wave revival or one-room gallery in insider pseudo-street language, wandering coffee in hand past walls painted the institutional green of a prison ward. And then there were a handful of serious journalists like me with a fundamental taste for reality, trying to produce work that mattered.

  Any number of credulous if marginally influential people began making asinine assumptions about my influence; I was suddenly almost popular, cavalierly discarding daily press releases and teases and invitations, emails and tweets and naturally letters, many lacking profanity. I would say the most interesting experience from this period was the death threats I received in response to an article on our epidemic of murdered witnesses.

  So as I was saying: thirty-three near attorneys go into a room, each a unique combination of lifelong virtue and intellectual ability and work ethic and simple greed and family expectations, and there they click away at documents and await the judgment of Heaven, their bar exam results. Who among this varied collection will be judged worthy?

  All of them: it’s a lawyer joke.

  There was my own name up on the website; I felt immensely relieved although not really astonished. And that celebratory moment marked the commencement, epitome, and conclusion of my legal career.

  It’s an interesting outcome; unlike so many of my colleagues I hadn’t enrolled in law school for lack of any acceptable alternative but because law in the abstract attracted me: Rousseau and Rawls, the individual as opposed to the community, the acquired illusion of human rights. Legal procedure and the practice of the profession appealed too; I like to understand the mechanics of reality, how things eventuate in this world. The field seemed part of my natural turf, as if in confronting its torturous enigmas I was somehow unfolding my own mind. Then once I had that cheap little paper license in my wallet I was done, which I concede makes absolutely no sense.

  This was some years ago now, and during the interven
ing years nothing much has really changed on the local political scene, but there have been repeated promises about a Philadelphia poised on the brink of a renaissance. A susceptible listener might visualize a city opening like a spring crocus, all good things not only possible but daily expected, new opportunity already in the mail. These visions arose randomly, so far as I could judge, living out their short lives without reference to any election year or resurgent popular philosophy but according to some more elemental rhythm, some recurrent natural force never anywhere near powerful enough to overthrow a destructive culture. Anyway, our current mayor, back when he was first named the party candidate, adopted a version of this optimistic vision. Hand-picked by Democratic Party Chairman Gerry Bright - Bright was an athlete gone to seed with a shark’s smile and observant blue eyes, carrot-red hair, and the big bruising heart of the party itself – he’d faced the cameras one afternoon a month or so before the primary and proclaimed this latest rebirth. “There are particular ideas I’ve worked on for years, plans to restore the greatness of this city.” Appropriate from a candidate running on jobs and education, but then he’d stubbornly refused to supply more than that until he worked it out with his new administration, anything else would be premature.

  As a Democrat he was the de facto mayor-elect, nothing else was interesting about the campaign, plus he could claim Thom as a loyal if waspish supporter. So when I glimpsed Thom rushing by me one bright afternoon, a blur of unlikely plaid begging to be noticed, I shouted to intercept him and beg for specifics.

  “Well, here we’re past the first debate and God knows how many campaign speeches, but your candidate still hasn’t clarified how he’s going to initiate this glorious new age.”

  “I understand there’s a master plan wherein we all do the best we can. Or so one devoutly hopes.” Said softly, bending forward in a light laugh to show that it mattered, regarding me with that overtly shrewd look in order to conceal the insistent energy behind the obvious political smarts. He was radiating a restless joy on that beautiful day, practically bouncing on the balls of the feet. We were both just bullshitting, obviously.

  Thom was looking off through one of those cold-as-death City Hall archways, perhaps pondering the municipal future. This mayor-to-be habitually neglected to pay his personal utility bills and other miscellaneous shady debts for one contentiously self-righteous reason or another, whining or truculent, which behavior elicited not one whit of public outrage except from the extremely frustrated opposition. After all, after all: he’d happily face the cameras with that ingratiating grin, explaining how his campaign required all his finances, so obviously he was doing the only reasonable thing, right? Therefore the usual type, progressing along the curve from petty criminal to incumbent.

  “You should run for mayor yourself.” I said.

  “Independent?” One eyebrow lifted.

  “No, next time. After the inevitable second term.” I was laughing.

  Thom pretended to consider it on the spot, miming serious concentration, pushing up his lower lip like a bulldog. “I‘m thinking of something a bit more prestigious.” Leaning in confidentially. “Even Harrisburg is much too paltry a challenge for my talents. Let’s say Capitol Hill for a proper start.”

  We were in the courtyard, Thom with his briefcase in both hands preparing to escape, his increasingly sparse hair lifting a bit in the breeze. I’d been heading back to my doc review job, still a necessary paycheck. We were standing on patched cement bearing a grid of the city surrounded by the signs of the zodiac, a lunatic juxtaposition. At the four corners of the courtyard official flowerbeds displayed sprightly red and yellow tulips. A clutch of teens rushed in, wary and noisy, scanning for something novel to do; we watched them safely through the archway, Thom shifting from one foot to the other, a nervous little boy.

  Someone else was upon us, had been steadily moving towards us with long, firm strides that finally broke into my consciousness as I realized Thom was her target. Found you! Am I barging in? Apologies.” The most local of accents, almost a parody. They kissed lightly, and I was surprised: this female was far below his usual standards, raw-boned and big overall, but at the same time too thin. Not lovely in any respect, although exuding a subtle self-importance. She offered me her hand. “Ruth Dougherty.” And while performing her initial assessment she stared right at me with these acutely intelligent, huge blue eyes, so after all she did have one claim to beauty. But they were damaged, much too vulnerable eyes. She was maybe five or six inches over my five four.

  “The Ruth Dougherty,” Thom said, bestowing a slightly mocking but courtly nod.

  Now that made more sense. It meant she’d be readily acceptable to the general voting public, for one thing. Interesting. She wasn’t what I associated with the reputation. Ruth was a genuine local celebrity if not for any admirable reason, lacking even the gravitas of legitimate talk radio. She just opened her mouth and babbled cleverly without significance. An apparent relationship with Thom wasn’t a catastrophe then, might even prove clever.

  But still.

  They were eating each other up. He was bewitched, flushed and embarrassed, and she was right there with him. I practically had to get between them to get their attention.

  I glanced at my watch, touching on the mayor’s race again in parting and she jumped right in. “This whole thing of disrespecting the law infuriates me.” Her expression, I thought, inappropriately bitter, taking it personally. “I mean, half the world is struggling for rule of law.”

  Heavy sun beamed down into the courtyard, blinding out the gray-white stone, warming the backs of the constant passers-by in their open suit jackets and ill-fitting blouses, the middle-aged men with those status decrepit leather briefcases, the women carrying laptop bags and tote bags and designer purses all at once, and the young professionals with backpacks staring into their phones. Everyone unconsciously showing with their attempted style or make-up what they wanted to be or thought they already were. We joined the stream, drifting through a cool tunnel, emerging into the light and halting there facing west towards the business district. Ruth turned to me and grinned. “So I hear you’re brilliant.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Well listen, don’t you think a mayor should respect the law at least enough to lie about breaking it?”

  I responded with a surprised laugh, and she launched into farewells with a small smile and finger kiss to Thom’s lips. It was much too flirty and girlish a gesture for her large frame, for her whole forthright personality.

  Right about that time my nascent career took one of those catastrophic turns that hit when you start to relax: my job with the weekly evaporated overnight with no warning, victim of a mind-boggling whirlwind of layoffs.

  Leaving me to commiserate with those embittered cohorts still stuck on the doc review circuit, melding into old-timers, back from other assignments at Dechert or Blank Rome or down in Delaware, jobs with better quarters or worse, with different rules but the same familiar faces. Up in some slick conference room with the sweet Mary sunshines and bright boys and cautious guys and eager girls and some lawyer on the case team who doesn’t quite get you’re an attorney too. Permanent transients constructing a new profession, claiming unemployment to cover the empty weeks, competing with a host of fresh graduates bursting with untried ambition. I’d been undeservedly lucky, steadily employed on a single ongoing matter, but one memorable morning a veritable host of old friends filtered in on an assignment set for some months, all happily catching up on the gossip and getting their passwords refreshed, and that same afternoon the matter settled and goodbye. Resigned shrugs and slight humor, while Eric and I exchanged a quick glance and turned back to our monitors.

  I stood staring at my phone in total mental shock, unable to process being bluntly denied the one outlet that justified my life, energized my soul. Newspapers everywhere were folding, of course, Philly’s major dailies suffering with the rest, the entire medium stubbornly adhering to some kind of romantic, se
lf-important self-image that overlooked chain takeovers and inadequate reportage practices harking back decades, instead pointing an accusatory, contemptuous finger at the Internet.

  It happened that our sole remaining star, our great Pulitzer-bedecked glory, had just changed hands for approximately the fourth time in the last decade. This latest transition found it unloaded by a corporation who’d reappraised their ego-to-debt ratio, to be acquired by an indefatigable group of local saviors. Make that papers, plural, because that elite sheet and our feisty Philly tabloid were sisters, sharing one owner and operating out of the same building. If I hadn’t been desperate I never would have tried for a job there, but I was and I tried everywhere, and miraculously they hired me for the City Hall beat.

  Well, what they were actually doing, during those first few months flush with hubris, was hiring selectively but terminating wholesale, gathering in the young and retiring their more senior employees, a policy of assisted retirement that dispersed experienced reporters and editors to marginally healthier papers elsewhere and instigated discrimination claims still in litigation. Additionally the paper eliminated most national and all international offices, never mind its former vaunted claims of global reach, and instead launched a daily section targeting the more prosperous suburbs. The declared idea was to cut it all down to cost-efficient, manageable size, but new hires included several virtually illiterate celebrity columnists, all of whom fortunately vanished quickly enough to spare everyone major embarrassment. It was sort of tragically hilarious when it wasn’t just sadly delusional, everyone still stubbornly thinking newspapers mattered.

  I was something of an exception in that I wasn’t exactly young or famous, but they already knew me and I came cheap, so there I was working for the paper that printed my first letter not all that long before, and at that point I finally abandoned my doc review default job, leaving the task of realigning the legal profession in this new upside-down world to my millennial colleagues. Over the years Josh got passionate: today he’s a staff attorney at a prestigious immigration non-profit, making actual law. Eric of course stayed in place, eventually rising one step to project manager, his negativity an asset in that supervisory role and anyway he was always that kind of unimaginative bright boy. But really I’m being unfair, because the innovators at that firm are developing the new electronic legal profession, meanwhile nurturing and promoting young loyalists. Meanwhile Petra went off to her associate’s job, scored a quickly truncated cable television career doing brief interviews between programs, and now she’s with another fairly successful suburban firm, handling estates.