Inner Tube: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

into the purplish depths of my snifter. The old cross-examiner, he had me in a box.
    “The truth is, a lot of parents, maybe most, would be inclined to let you pay for your arrogance. The boy wants to swim against the tide, so be it, they say. But we’re not liable if he drowns. Your mother and I aren’t ready to be so blasé. We don’t want to lose any more of you than we already have, and we cannot have you over in some swamp ducking mortar fire or up in Toronto ducking the FBI.”
    I smiled encouragingly.
    “All right, it can be taken care of. Not much point in shoveling as much shit as I do if I can’t get a thing fixed every once in a while. So I can make some calls and I can get you a deferment. Takes me twenty minutes. But you have to pay your way here, my friend. You have to take whatever job I get you and stick with it and make a contribution.”
    CBS had its news operation in a one-time milk factory on Eleventh Avenue. The halls were extremely narrow, like the walkways in a submarine. People were forever flattening themselves. They called us desk assistants and took our fingerprints, but we were really copy boys. A hundred and ten a week, shirt and tie required, and all the pencils we could sneak out of the building. I worked turnaround shift on the TV side, midnight to eight. Four a.m. was the real dead spot and that’s when I’d slide next door with Ron, the gay telex operator from Palm Beach, and toke up on the Evening News set.
    It was a large blue room, but not that large. File cabinets, a blackboard, a few glassed-in cubicles, the big desk with the wall map behind, and off to the right the bank of wire-copy machines it was part of my job to look after. (The only time they were ever turned off was during the actual show, when a background tape was substituted; the real clack-clacking would have drowned out every word.) At that hour the place was sure to be deserted, and other than that we didn’t give it much thought. But sometimes, sitting in that great delphic throne and hoodooing my brain, a peculiar sensation would steal over me. Looking into the dead eye of the camera, I would imagine millions of American hearthsides visible only from where I perched, that I could somehow reach through the eye and deposit in those deeply slumbering places all the secrets kept off the air. What I sent to them instead were lungfuls of smoke.
    One night a network correspondent called in from Bonn. He was mournful and drunk and wanted to talk to anyone. They’d thrown him out of the hotel bar. His girlfriend had dumped him for a Hungarian diplomat. He had a gun in his room and was thinking seriously about using it.
    I said, “Shall I tell them to cancel your satellite time for tomorrow?”
    “Kid, listen to me, kid. I’ve lost it. Pride, control, whatever it is. Totally lost it. I’m nothing but a foul ball out here.”
    I told him to hold on while I got a cigarette. When I came back someone else was on the line and they were speaking German. I hung up.
    But the man was on air the following night with his transatlantic feed, standing in front of the Bundestag solid as a pilaster, steam wisping out of his nostrils, eyes steady and hard. A real old-time reporter’s face, on which a smile was a deformity.
    The calls became a semi-regular thing, even after his transfer to Prague (“Best beer in the world, kid”). He was usually tanked, but not always, and we’d talk about whatever was bothering him that particular night: his colitis, his ex-wife in Cincinnati and the kids who never wrote, the articles Atlantic Monthly kept rejecting. It amazed me how anxious he was for my good opinion.
    “How was the piece Tuesday? Did you see it?”
    “Well, the fur hat. I don’t know.”
    “So I looked ridiculous? Like a cat fell asleep on my head?”
    “More or less. But the piece itself was fine. Really.”
    “Really?”
    He wasn’t the only one easily wounded in those days, so I told a lot of lies. I was young and I