Chapter 5
Lord, how Luther missed the Rams. It’s true, they sucked, but he loved the Coliseum. It was a mausoleum, true enough, but the sun and people never failed to make the experiences memorable. The Spartan hardness of the bleacher seats lent an air of spirituality to the place. This was a working man’s stadium, a place where the average Joe could bring his kids to see USC play UCLA. He recalled the day that some fat broad sitting behind him had almost given him an enema with her megaphone. It was Luther’s own fault, though. He could have been sitting in the press box, although that would have meant sitting beside Charlie Cantrell, the self-nominated sports guru from The Times. Charlie was Luther's long-time nemesis. The two men had a feud running which had been ebbing and flowing since about 1983.
Charlie had been an All-American football player at USC, and Luther had been… well, Luther never actually played college football, but he hated letting the truth stand in the way of a good story, so he invented a cover story—he’d told Charlie that he wanted to play football, but had been advised not to go out for the team because of a very rare blood disease. Actually, it hadn’t been too far from the truth… his blood normally held such a high alcohol content that any exertion whatsoever might have proved fatal. Luther was so jealous of Charlie’s fame and notoriety that he went above and beyond the call of duty to trip him up at every possible juncture--always without success. It had become Luther's Holy Grail, his sacred quest. Luther considered Charlie a no-talent hack whose All-American status had greased the way to his present stature. He resented Charlie's money, friends, athletic good looks and charm-- hell, nearly everything about him. Charlie was the Frank Gifford of print journalism, in Luther's opinion, and he couldn't understand why people couldn't see right through him. Underneath all that Calvin Kline window dressing beat the heart of a swindler, and someday he would prove it. Until then, he would have to be content with merely being a thorn in Charlie's paw, a yin to Charlie's yang.
Luther was definitely a pouter. Like many of the unfortunate individuals inflicted with his genetic deficiency (a y chromosome), he spent a fair amount of time dwelling on the mistreatment, which was heaped upon him. Of course, he never would have admitted it. He preferred to think of it as his cross to bear. After all, those to whom much is given, much is expected, and he definitely had been given a bunch, hadn't he? Wasn't he a master wordsmith, on top of being a ladies man, the penultimate God's Gift to Femininity?
Luther had been described in many ways in his twenty years on the job, but never humble or contrite. Actually, he didn't give a tinker's damn what people thought of him, as long as they plunked down half-a-buck every morning for their personal copy of his prose. What a deal, he figured, you pay fifty cents for his column and you also get headlines, comics, classifieds, editorials and all that other nonsense. Personally, he thought the publishers should raise the price to about three bucks, and give him a third. Unfortunately, he’d gotten no support from Jewell on his proposal, and she was first in the chain of command.
In fact, these days, every time he made even the slightest inference regarding money (or more correctly, his lack thereof) she would just shake her head and order him out of the room. He’d throw up his hands, roll his eyes back in his head, and mutter all the way back to his office, bemoaning the perceived indignity at the top of his voice, to no one in particular. Nowadays, most of the more senior personnel never looked up. Those that bothered just smiled or giggled. Some had heard it so often, their lips moved in silent synchronism with Luther's. No doubt about it, Luther was a buffoon, a giant pain-in-the-ass, but everyone loved him, though few would admit it if threatened with beheading.
One hand held the ear-piece of his wire-rimmed glasses, and the hook was in his mouth. Luther stared at the clock on the far end of his office, although his eyes couldn't have read the numbers even if he had bothered to put his glasses on. It didn't matter. Luther was concentrating, or at least he gave the outward appearance of being lost in thought. The occasional twist of the frame was his only movement. Presently, he reclined in his swivel chair, both feet up on the edge of his desk, as though he were waiting for the blast of some unseen starter's pistol to launch his chair backwards across the city room. The cursor on the monitor flashed off and on, as if to let him know that he had, once again, stopped typing. Secretly, he suspected that there was a counter on the damned thing, and when it got to five thousand or so, an alarm went off in some bean-counter's office on the eleventh floor and another mark was placed beside Luther's name. He had a natural distrust for all things mechanical, because he felt that if a man could design it, a man could use it to control another man… and Adler Addison was a control freak.
Luther looked on the cursor as a half-inch Communist. Why else would it flash, if there were no reason or message to it? No, there was no doubt about it, some Marxist Bolshevik had secretly designed the flashing cursor as a way to control society, and it may be Bill Gates himself. Who had ever really checked him out? Hell, Gates had more money that the Federal Government, he could very easily buy out a few FBI people, or better than that, just use his magic cursor to change any reports they might file.
Why in blazes had they taken his typewriter away from him? Luther missed the intimacy of the clacker keys. Disgustedly, the balding sportswriter tossed his glasses on the desk and stared at nothing. Would this workday never end? Inside his head, a voice reminded him that he was getting too old for this shit.
