Sam Reynard -- School Writing Assignment

[Lorpius Prime]

Samuel Simmons Reynard was furious. He was incalculably, uncontrollably, and utterly furious. His rage was beyond exploding, it was so great that he sat in his swivel chair just shaking. His teeth were set, his neck was tense, and everything looked just a little red from behind his eyes.

He started to raise his hands and curled fingers towards his temples, perhaps in an effort to keep his head from exploding. But before they got there, he squeezed them into fists and slammed them down on his desk.

Everything jumped a half-inch into the air before falling back down. Several pencils and a pen came rolling out of a cup, coffee spilled out of another. Sam made no effort to combat the mess, but he did pick up the newspaper before it could be stained.

He wanted to tear it apart, he wanted to shake it and beat it and stab it with a knife. The front page tore a little at either side as his fingers clenched a little too tightly.

He did shake it some, and snarled at it in futile anger. In a way, it was his own fault for leaving early the previous day. If he hadn’t gone, he would have been able to see the preliminary paste-up and murder Barry before it went to the presses.

Now he would just have to settle for murdering Barry after it had already been printed.

Sam stood up very suddenly. His chair shot backwards and careened into a squat filing cabinet, making a dent in the thin metal. Sam decided this was not nearly destructive enough, so he kicked the chair for good measure. It crashed into the back wall with a thud and toppled over.

He stomped around the desk and to the office door and did his best to wrench the knob out of its socket when he threw the door open.

There was only one junior editor in the hall, and he took one look at Sam from over his coffee before ducking through a door. Sam pushed his glasses up on his nose and marched out of his office and around the corner. His boss’s office was at the end of the hallway. Sam marched towards the heavy wooden door, the newspaper still dangling from his left hand.

He thought about kicking in the door, but decided against it. Even so, his entrance was violent enough that the secretary in the outer office gave him a funny look. Her hair was tied back in a bun and she seemed like she’d been filing her nails or something, she raised an eyebrow at Sam.

He shook the paper at her like it was her fault, “I’m going to kill him, Jeanine! I’m going to kill him!”

She shrugged and returned to fussing with her hand, “Push him out the window. It’ll look like he tripped.”

“I will.” He pivoted on one foot and made a beeline for the door to the inner office.

“Shut the door behind you so I can’t hear.”

[Lorpius Prime]

When Sam entered the office, Barry was sitting behind his enormous cherry wood desk, leaned as far back as his chair would allow, and smoking a cigar, his thumbs hooked under the straps of his suspenders.

The chair groaned as the fat man sat up abruptly. He started choking and had to pull the cigar from out of his teeth, “Sam! Great God man, but what are you doing barging in like that?”

“Mr. Reynard here to see you, Mr. Godwin,” the secretary’s nasal whine came floating through the doorway. Sam closed the door behind him before speaking.

Barry raised an eyebrow at the columnist; Sam chucked the paper at him.

It struck Godwin in the chest and toppled neatly onto his desk, Sam’s boss stood up as righteous fury filled his eyes, “Now just what in blazes do you think you’re doing?”

Sam wanted to grab him by the sweat-stained collars of his shirt and strangle him, “What the hell are you doing?” He jabbed a finger at the now battered newspaper, “You don’t print that!”

Barry pointed his own, warning, finger, “You do not get to tell me what I print or don’t print. I print news and that,” he made the slightest nod to the paper, “is news.”

“How dare you? How dare you? You don’t print names, Barry! Did the families even know yet? Could they have possibly known before you ran it on the front page?!” The blood was rising to Sam’s face and threatening to boil over.

“If we didn’t print it first, the Telegraph would have got it and I’ll be damned if I let them pull another—“

“Damn, the Telegraph, Barry! He worked for you! He was just in this office, your office a week ago! What could possibly have possessed you? Have you got any kind of soul at all?!” There was no way that the secretary couldn’t hear him. There was no way the entire block couldn’t hear him. Sam didn’t care.

Barry Godwin put the cigar back in his teeth purposefully, “I’ve got a job to do, a responsibility to this newspaper—“

Sam snapped. He did grab Barry by the collar of his shirt, then he dragged the other man halfway across his desk to bring their faces only an inch apart. Sam wanted to keep shouting, wanted to smash his flabby conceited face right into the desk. But he just glared, jaw clenched shut, shivering with rage.

The Chief Editor’s face had become oddly calm and the look from his beady eyes sent ice running through Sam’s heart, “You want to reconsider what it is you’re doing, boy?”

Sam let him go, still fuming but unable to bring himself to actually follow through with his violent intentions. Barry took a few steps away from the desk, turning toward the floor-to-ceiling window behind. He brushed off his shirt and nodded. The tip of the cigar flared red.

“I thought so,” he let out a cloud of smoke. “You’re the best writer on my staff, Sam. But if you ever do something like that again I will throw you out on your ass. I will then personally send a dozen beggars each day to kick you where you’re lying on the street because I will make damned sure you never work in this business again. You work for me. If you’ve got a complaint then you can damn well shove it and do what I tell you. Do you have a problem?”

Sam’s fists were clenching and unclenching, “He was my friend.”

“Shove it. This ain’t your school paper; this ain’t your mother’s gossip-circle. This is the big leagues and we are at war for the story out there,” he made a sweeping gesture for the windows. “Nothing is more important than getting that story and we will not let chickenshit moral nagging get between us and the story.”

[Lorpius Prime]

“You don’t print the names of the dead without telling the family first, Barry. You don’t do it! It’s… it’s…”

“It’s what it takes to stay ahead in this business, Sam.” The Chief Editor took a long drag on his cigar.

Sam wanted to throw something. He wanted to take off his hat, throw it to the floor, and stomp on it; but it was hanging on the hat rack back in his own office. An unfortunate oversight.

Instead he turned around and slammed a fist into the wall beside the office door.

“Barry, so help me if you ever print something—“

“Beggars. Out on your ass with beggars kicking you.” He took the cigar from his teeth and waved it at Sam, “You want to destroy woodwork on your own time?”

The door opened partway and the secretary’s head appeared through it.

“Is Sam actually trying to kill you, Mr. Godwin?”

He waved her off, “We’re fine, Jeanine.”

She turned to look at Sam, “Are you all right, honey?”

Sam closed his eyes, let a deep breath in and out, and nodded. The door clicked shut again.

Barry sat down, laid his hands on his desk with his fingertips pressed together and looked at Sam. The red cinders at the end of the cigar were like an angry third eye.

“I like you, Sam. You’re angry, you’re catching a glimpse of the dirty underbelly of this business and it makes you mad. It makes us all mad.” Sam doubted it made Barry all that mad, but he didn’t say anything.

The Chief Editor continued, “But you’re not going to let that stop you. You’re going to huff and moan and destroy some office supplies—yours, not mine—and then you’re going to get over it. You’re going to toughen up, knuckle down, and do your job. And you’re going to do it because that’s the standard I hold everyone to in this office, and I don’t expect any more out of my people than I know they’re capable of, and that I wouldn’t do myself.”

He leaned back in the chair again, hands still arrogantly clasped together, “Everything for the story, Sam. Remember that. Everything and anything for the story, because nothing is more important.”

Sam was stunned by the motto. Not because Barry had said it, but because he realized Barry meant it. Every word.

“You’re giving up your soul for it.”

Barry crushed out his cigar in a glass ashtray, “Job doesn’t leave room for one.”

Sam left the inner office shaking his head. He stood just beyond the door for a few minutes, trying to steady his breathing. The secretary, Jeanine, gave him a sympathetic look, but was kind enough not to say anything.

After a few minutes, he set his shoulders and began walking back to his office. He had a column due by five o’clock.