The woman who came to see me was in her late 40’s or early 50s but she looked older and dressed younger, a lot younger. She was still attractive, sort of, but she looked, how shall I say — different.
Her hair was peroxided. Her skin was a deep leathery brown — she had spent way too much time in the sun. But, if I noticed such things, I would have said she still had a nice figure.
She had come to The News & Observer to see me about a story and we sat in one of the interview rooms talking. Out of the corner of my eye I could see she was getting a lot of attention. As reporters walked up and down the hall outside they could see her through the window of the interview room. Several times I saw a head jerk around to look. Some of my colleagues paused to get a second look.
As soon as I returned to my desk up walked Dudley Price, a friend, a reporter, and the newsroom’s most notorious character: Dudley would say almost anything to almost anyone at almost any time.
“Who was that whore you were talking to?” he asked loudly.
And for once in my life I had a response.
“That wasn’t a whore, Dudley. That was my sister.”
Dudley staggered backwards a step or two — he actually staggered — like I’d hit him in the face with a wet towel. He mumbled an apology and left. He came back a minute or two later and apologized again.
I was loving it.
I didn’t give Dudley a heads up, not that day, or the next, or the next. And then my phone rang. It was Brooke Cain, a researcher at the paper, and a good one. For years she had help me on almost every story I had worked.
“Why is Dudley doing a background on you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “What does he want to know?”
“He wants to know about your sisters,” Brooke said.
Coming Friday: “Vintage Jack Hyland”