quickly buried, although never retracted. Within the week she was out the door, the story behind her story having become its own newsworthy story, the subject of self-examining op-ed pieces across the country and not a few panel discussions.
Excoriated for unhesitatingly scuttling a good cop’s reputation to further her own, emotionally whittled to a nub by her disgrace, and unable to support herself even if she chose to make a stand, Stacey moved back in with her parents in Rochester. With her father’s help, she became a part owner of a food truck christened My Hero, which was more or less permanently stationed across the street from the SUNY Brockport dormitory complex. After two years of full-time sandwich making in this drizzly exile, she endured another blow when both her parents died in a collision with an ambulance at an intersection three blocks from home. She spent the first two weeks after the funeral living alone in their house hoping for a visitation, then put it on the market. A few months later, temporarily flush with the proceeds of the sale, a small inheritance, and the buyout money she received from selling her share of My Hero, she quietly returned to the city.
Unable to find work as a reporter but banking on the skills she had developed as one, she reinvented herself as a private investigator, earning just enough to take a lease on a one-bedroom walk-up near Columbia University. For a while she held on to the hope of finding her way back into the newspaper business, but that pipe dream came to an end the day she accepted an invitation to address an Ethics and Ambition seminar in the university’s J-school, the experience leaving her feeling like a still-sentient cadaver picked over by medical students in an anatomy class.
Rather than enjoying the poetic justice of Stacey’s downfall, Billy felt torn—no, actually sorry for her, mostly ignoring the fact that she had tried to advance her career on his broken back. In fact, he had been the one to make the first move, reaching out to her with an e-mail a year after she returned to the city, and since then they had gradually, cautiously become friends. For her part, Stacey had been both astonished and humbled by his lack of vindictiveness, never once imagining that his gentle overture was motivated by anything other than old-time Christian compassion.
When Billy finally got it up to enter the diner, he spotted her at once, sitting at a booth in the back—north of forty now, too thin, too much wine, too much late-night TV—paradiddling an unlit cigarette against the Formica and reading the paper that had shit-canned her eighteen years ago for getting it all wrong about Billy and the shooting. She was wearing a ribbed turtleneck that made her look even bonier than she was and accentuated her slightly scoliotic posture. Her hair, a blond so ashy that it was impossible to tell how gray it might be turning, was pulled back in a short, rubber band–bound ponytail, and her watchful eyes were, as always, a little too quick, as if she were jonesing for something she couldn’t have. She’d been a golden girl once, and she took her tumble hard.
“Hey, how’s it going,” Billy said as he took a seat.
“The meat’s so tough that it got up off the plate and beat the shit out of the coffee, which was too weak to defend itself.”
“No kidding.”
“The PI business sucks. I hate the people who hire me, and I hate the people they want found.”
“I hear you.”
“Never serve a subpoena on a guy holding a pan of bacon. I put up my arm to protect my face and ruined a perfectly good North Face coat.”
“Good thing it was a cold day,” he said mildly, then, wanting her to get to it: “So . . .”
“I’m back to writing.”
“For money?”
“Not much, but you bet.”
“Good for you.” This could take a while.
“I’m writing an online sex column.”
“A what?”
“For this e-zine, Matterhorn .”
“What’s an
Excoriated for unhesitatingly scuttling a good cop’s reputation to further her own, emotionally whittled to a nub by her disgrace, and unable to support herself even if she chose to make a stand, Stacey moved back in with her parents in Rochester. With her father’s help, she became a part owner of a food truck christened My Hero, which was more or less permanently stationed across the street from the SUNY Brockport dormitory complex. After two years of full-time sandwich making in this drizzly exile, she endured another blow when both her parents died in a collision with an ambulance at an intersection three blocks from home. She spent the first two weeks after the funeral living alone in their house hoping for a visitation, then put it on the market. A few months later, temporarily flush with the proceeds of the sale, a small inheritance, and the buyout money she received from selling her share of My Hero, she quietly returned to the city.
Unable to find work as a reporter but banking on the skills she had developed as one, she reinvented herself as a private investigator, earning just enough to take a lease on a one-bedroom walk-up near Columbia University. For a while she held on to the hope of finding her way back into the newspaper business, but that pipe dream came to an end the day she accepted an invitation to address an Ethics and Ambition seminar in the university’s J-school, the experience leaving her feeling like a still-sentient cadaver picked over by medical students in an anatomy class.
Rather than enjoying the poetic justice of Stacey’s downfall, Billy felt torn—no, actually sorry for her, mostly ignoring the fact that she had tried to advance her career on his broken back. In fact, he had been the one to make the first move, reaching out to her with an e-mail a year after she returned to the city, and since then they had gradually, cautiously become friends. For her part, Stacey had been both astonished and humbled by his lack of vindictiveness, never once imagining that his gentle overture was motivated by anything other than old-time Christian compassion.
When Billy finally got it up to enter the diner, he spotted her at once, sitting at a booth in the back—north of forty now, too thin, too much wine, too much late-night TV—paradiddling an unlit cigarette against the Formica and reading the paper that had shit-canned her eighteen years ago for getting it all wrong about Billy and the shooting. She was wearing a ribbed turtleneck that made her look even bonier than she was and accentuated her slightly scoliotic posture. Her hair, a blond so ashy that it was impossible to tell how gray it might be turning, was pulled back in a short, rubber band–bound ponytail, and her watchful eyes were, as always, a little too quick, as if she were jonesing for something she couldn’t have. She’d been a golden girl once, and she took her tumble hard.
“Hey, how’s it going,” Billy said as he took a seat.
“The meat’s so tough that it got up off the plate and beat the shit out of the coffee, which was too weak to defend itself.”
“No kidding.”
“The PI business sucks. I hate the people who hire me, and I hate the people they want found.”
“I hear you.”
“Never serve a subpoena on a guy holding a pan of bacon. I put up my arm to protect my face and ruined a perfectly good North Face coat.”
“Good thing it was a cold day,” he said mildly, then, wanting her to get to it: “So . . .”
“I’m back to writing.”
“For money?”
“Not much, but you bet.”
“Good for you.” This could take a while.
“I’m writing an online sex column.”
“A what?”
“For this e-zine, Matterhorn .”
“What’s an
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