A Confidential Source Read Free Page A

in beauty, so committed to my transformation, that I couldn’t get mad about it. And she was right
     about the eyebrows.
    The phone rang and Carolyn picked it up. By the sound of the conversation, it had something to do with her older daughter’s
     habit of forgetting her homework. I took a bite of my bagel and tried to chew. Leonard must have hand-delivered the note last
     night on his way home from the station. Why had he gone to such trouble?
    “Okay, I’ll drive it over at lunchtime,” Carolyn said. “But this is the
last, the absolute last
time.” She slammed the phone into the cradle and seethed in silence. Then she turned to me. “You are so lucky you don’t have
     kids.”
    I nodded, noncommittally. There were only the two of us permanently assigned to this bureau, and sometimes, when I had to
     cover for her because the kids were sick or had to be driven somewhere, my child-free status worked in my favor. Other times,
     Carolyn seemed to resent me for it.
    “That
friend
of yours coming to stay tonight?” she asked.
    She meant Walter. He was my sponsor, a friend I’d met at substance-abuse meetings who’d helped me kick the sleeping pills
     my doctor had prescribed after my brother, Sean, died. Walter drove a cab in Boston but slept on my futon now and then when
     he had a late-night gig playing guitar in Providence.
    “Yes.” I felt it necessary to add, “He’s engaged to a good friend of mine.”
    Carolyn shrugged in a manner that suggested that was no barrier. From what she’d told me about her personal life, I’d gathered
     that she hadn’t hesitated to break up a marriage or two. Once, she’d fixed me up with one of her ex-husband’s coworkers, who,
     it turned out, wasn’t yet divorced. “Oh, please, it’s just a matter of time. They’re in couples counseling,” she’d said afterward.
     “And you know how that goes.”
    There was really no use explaining again that Walter was a surrogate brother. Carolyn didn’t seem to understand the parameters
     of a platonic relationship.
    She dropped into her chair and booted up her computer. Even though she professed to despise all office politics, first thing
     every morning she dialed Providence and called up the newspaper’s in-house gossip file.
    The
Chronicle
used its bureaus much like major-league baseball used its farm teams. The occasional “star reporter” might get hired away
     from a smaller paper right into the downtown newsroom, but most new recruits were assigned to these little bureaus across
     the state, where they were expected to prove themselves before getting promoted into the city. Bureau managers like Carolyn
     were former reporters who had developed “management potential” and thus had to cut their teeth as bosses in a bureau before
     being taken seriously as candidates for a news-editor or department-editor job downtown. Just like in the minor leagues, some
     would never make it to the pros. And many bureau managers, like Carolyn, claimed an outright preference for the more autonomous
     hinterlands.
    But whether it was involuntary or by choice, working in the relative isolation of a bureau helped whet an inordinate appetite
     for in-house gossip. Even the new reporters who hadn’t met each other wanted to know who was getting married or having a baby.
     But more important, we wanted to know who was getting praise from the editors, who was getting the choice assignments, and
     who had the inside track into the city.
    Today, though, I had more pressing interests. Opening my drawer to peek at the note, I could make out the big
L,
the hard slant of Leonard’s signature on the bottom of the paper. I shut the drawer when Carolyn abruptly turned around.
    “Susannah Rodman is leaving the paper for the
New York Times,
” she said, looking fierce and sad and angry. Even though Carolyn swore she had no interest in a promotion to an editorial
     job downtown, let alone in leaving the state of Rhode Island, I instantly