At last she leaves. The sun has fallen, a cold blue light pressed against my office window. My colleagues have quit for the day, but I like to be overworked. There are things I can do before I go home.

I begin combing through a press release that’s been submitted for my analysis by some Midwestern agricultural concern. They’re trying to get ahead of reports of toxic runoff from their pig farms in Nebraska. Blood-rimmed fingernails clicking on the keys, I offer notes, e-mail it back. Tomorrow, the corporation will disseminate the release to the wire services and I’ll watch the words I’ve inserted, like germs under a microscope, multiply in newspapers all across America.

This is how I make the news today.

—

On my walk home, I take a detour and pass by Lane Porter’s old apartment building. The Vice interview has brought the story to my tongue, so while I’d usually avoid this block, I’m attracted to the landmark, as if to confer with someone else who knows.

Lane’s building still has its green-and-red detailing. Back then, I’d thought it was the height of tastelessness, but now it looks like a minor architectural masterpiece beside the deadly conservative restorations on the rest of the block.

What would my old colleagues think, I wonder, if one of them ran into me outside this building? Would they even recognize me? The last time I saw any of them was at Mort Brewer’s memorial, almost ten years ago. Mort retired after the Bystander folded, then died of a heart attack in his sleep, a death to envy.

At the memorial, I sat with Gordon Stone. All along our row I saw the old Bystander team: Ross Briggs, Nathan Zimmer, Richard Calvin, names the Vice writer associates with some golden age of the American magazine. I felt we were distinguished from the other attendees, we’d shared in something near to the dead man’s heart, but I also remember feeling almost unwelcome. The Bystander’s demise was when people started smelling earth on Mort, and I felt like we’d failed him. We were responsible for the beginning of the end that had brought us together that day.

But more than anything, as I listened to eulogies from Bob Silvers, Harold Evans, and Lewis Lapham, I was relieved. No one ever believed in me like Mort had, yet I was glad to see him go, just as I’d be glad to see Lane’s building torn down. Mort was the last one I ever told about the story.

2.