New York City gossip queen pens novel
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The job had also helped decorate her apartment for free and thus, seven years later, reflected her many travels throughout the boroughs of New York. Above her bed was a large Jackson Pollock-esque drip oil painting that Sherry, the homeless woman/artist who'd rescued a dog from certain death off the subway tracks in Chelsea during rush hour ("Bum Ride!" page 12, lead story, September 18, 2002), had pulled from her shopping cart and given to Penelope after Penelope had taken her to lunch during their interview. In the living room there was a small wooden chair in the corner with an embroidered seat cushion that Mrs. Blackstone, who ran a thrift shop in Crown Heights that had been burgled ("Burglar Breaks in Looking for a Steal," page 21, bottom story, April 7, 2005), had sold her at a steep discount. Penelope had received the 1940s Formica kitchen table gratis from the Grubmans, a Coney Island carnie couple — she was the bearded lady, he was the escape artist — who were cleaning out their storage closet as Penelope interviewed them about Mrs. Grubman's beard catching on fire during an unfortunate incident with the flame swallower ("Beard Burn!" page 19, right-hand column, July 25, 2004). And all over the walls and fridge were other collected artwork and personal treasures that Penelope had picked up while on various assignments: a Ghanaian bust from Harlem, an Indian painting of the goddess Shiva she'd gotten during a story in Bellerose, Queens, a watercolor of Athens from Astoria, a tiny Torah from Borough Park, and a kitschy set of Russian nesting dolls she'd gotten as a gift from Olga, a Russian escort from Brighton Beach, after Penelope had convinced the Telegraph to pay Olga's bail during the 2006 Russian hooker crackdown in exchange for an exclusive interview ("Mayor Rages: No More Russkie Rent Girls!" the entire front page or "The Wood" as it was known at the paper, February 10, 2006). She'd also given Olga the number of a nearby shelter and a women's support group, but figured Olga probably wouldn't use either.
Besides artwork and furniture, she'd also picked up her best, and pretty much only, friend. She'd met Neal, a chic interior decorator for the city's elite, during a stakeout four years earlier. She doorstepped him during a thunderstorm after his ex-boyfriend, Bernard Bertrand, a dog groomer who'd owned a store called Doggy 'Do and Pussies Too! attempted to burn down the Madison Avenue apartment of Nan Thrice, Neal's society queen client, after Neal broke up with him. The society queen's social standing made her interesting to the paper, but Penelope knew nothing about her. After five hours of sitting on his stoop in the rain, chain smoking under a flimsy black umbrella, Neal had taken pity on her, invited her inside, and given her an exclusive interview. She'd been his "little work in progress" ever since.
His other pet project was a society girl named Lena Lippencrass, and from the stories Neal always told about Lena, she sounded like she could be even more of a project than Penelope. Neal called her "Lipstick Carcrash," for reasons he refused to tell Penelope but which she assumed were due to Lipstick's glamorous job at the fashion magazine Y and her unfortunate habit of colliding with any kind of obstacle, be it a step, an errant tree limb, or a man.
"I've seen the entire world by subway," Penelope told Neal. After seven years at the Telegraph, she figured she knew one person from almost every community on every block in New York and had probably written about them.
But all the really good, juicy stories were uncovered in the court system. Penelope had refused offers of other beats in hopes of being available once her dream job opened up. She didn't want to get sidetracked. Two years earlier she'd even turned down the transport beat, despite the minor pay increase.
"It would be a lateral move that would take me out of the running for courts forever," Penelope explained to Neal. "The transport guys never advance in the paper. Lou Francis was on it for six years and had a heart attack, Kwani Hadebe was so bored with that beat he chose to go back to copyediting, and the only person who went anywhere semi-interesting after working transport was Christine Pride — who left for WKBC to do their traffic updates. She's now known as the 'Car Cutie.'"
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But holding out for so long was proving to be a tricky game. It was an unwritten rule at the Telegraph that if you were in one position for more than five years, you were considered a "lifer" in that specific job. And Penelope, whose five-year clock was ticking, did not want to be a GAR lifer. GAR lifers eventually become "rewrites" — rewriting wire copy and putting in random phone calls to back up the work of the street GARs. While the workload was easier and the chance of being fired without a lawsuit was slim to none, GAR lifers' careers were DOA — no chance of promotion or pay hike. Penelope called them "floaters" — a term she also used to refer to the little bits of poop that refused to flush in the toilet. ("No matter what they do — or don't do — they just keep popping back up.") Penelope lived in terror of a potential GAR-to-floater career trajectory.
So when Kershank gave notice, Penelope began lobbying like her life depended on it for his position, working overtime and even when sick. She'd started dropping by Martman's desk every day at least twice, showering him with compliments ("You look so great today, Martman, did you get a haircut?" "Is that a new cologne? It's amazing"), and peppering him with her knowledge of the court system, picked up from years of watching Court TV and Law & Order.
Martman, a man who was more susceptible to flattery than any actual display of court knowledge, seemed open to the idea of Penelope replacing Kershank and just last week said, "You're the front-runner! Now get to Coney Island and get me that midget and his mermaid lover. Now!"
Penelope groaned. It was too early and cold for the Bronx, but she consoled herself with the thought that it was only for a day or two more. She lumbered out of bed to the kitchen sink, where she brushed her teeth and washed her face. She noted her exhausted, disheveled image in the mirror, but decided to take a shower later and put on her "doorstepping" armor. First, long underwear (top and bottom) then a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a long-sleeved crewneck sweater, which she layered under a turtleneck sweater and a cardigan. After lacing up her hiking boots, she donned her long pink puffer coat, which Neal had begged her for years to ditch, that made her look like a small pink Michelin man. "Helloooo, gorgeous!" Penelope said to her reflection in the mirror.
Penelope rolled her long, dark blond curly hair into a bun and made a futile attempt to tame the frizzes that were creating a halo around her head. Good enough! she thought and danced over to the CD/radio alarm clock, cutting off Donna Summer at "Lookin' for some hot stuff baby this evenin', I need some hot stuff baby toniiiight!"
She grabbed her hefty reporter's bag — which carried a notebook, several chewed-up pens, an extra sweater, her purse, and a stick of deodorant — and shut off the apartment lights before making her way out onto Sullivan Street.
The weather had been forecasted as fifteen degrees with a winter storm on the way, but with the wind chill it felt at least twenty degrees colder, and the mixture of snow and sleet blowing perpendicularly into her face made it worse. Shivering, Penelope fought her way against the wind up Sixth Avenue to the West Fourth Street subway station four blocks away. After slipping twice on the stairs leading down to the trains, she finally made it onto the platform and hopped on the A train heading for one of the high-rise buildings in the Evergreen Gardens projects — which was neither green nor surrounded by gardens.
Excerpted from “Mercury in Retrograde” by Paula Froelich. Copyright (c) 2009, reprinted with permission from Simon and Schuster.
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