A Little Trouble with the Facts by Nina Siegal Page B

envelope on my desk. I picked it up. “V. Vane” was printed in careful calligraphy on the outside. I turned it over in my hands, feeling the weighty card-stock.
    “ O as in…,” Pinsky said, searching for me. “Oh, Valerie?”
    “Oh, wait a sec.” The envelope was sealed at the back with a faux wax stamp. I touched the raised label, the edges of the wax. It was an invitation. A genuine invitation!
    “As in, other people calling. Can’t spend the whole day on the phone with one reporter.”
    “Right,” I said, as if from a slumber. “I’ll have to call you back.” I felt blindly for the cradle and hung up on Pinsky.
    I held the envelope up to the light. Could it be? A real invitation? Could it be that my exile was finally coming to an end? That I was to be admitted back into society? I took a stab at the possibilities: Madame O’Hara’s unveiling of her new penthouse? A backstage pass to the Dalai Lama’s Central Park appearance? I began to tear the edge of the envelope, then I stopped. Could it be? Dare I imagine? An invite to Janis London’s annual picnic on Liberty Island? Wherever it was, I’d walk in like a traveler just returned from the wilderness, a little dazed, a little emaciated. “What was it like out there?” Janis would say. Or Madame O’Hara. Or the Dalai Lama.
    I dropped the envelope and felt around in my drawer for the silver letter opener that my mother had given me when I’d started on Style. It was the only gift I’d received from her in years, antique Deco with a firefly just above the handle and a long thin blade. I didn’t use it for just any old letter. I used it for important invitations, the kind with mulled-over guest lists. I found it enclosed in its velvet case at the very back of the drawer.
    I slid the letter opener’s narrowest edge under the envelope’s fold and carefully slid it back and forth. I reached inside and took out the card, relishing the soft crinkle of the paper. I saw the words, stenciled elegantly into the front of the plain white card, understated and stark: “In Memoriam.” I put down the paper knife and pushed open the card. “Please help us celebrate the too-brief life of Malcolm Wallace, who touched us all.”
    Without thinking, I clenched the letter opener in my palm and it nicked me, a shallow slice. It clattered onto the desk. I grabbed one hand with the other and jumped to my feet, glaring over the top of my cubicle wall accusingly. But I’d forgotten about the cord of my headset, which tugged at my head and choked me. I sat down and tore the headset off my head with my good hand and stood up again. It would’ve been comic if it wasn’t so sad. Who was to blame? Was it the clerk with the red ringlets? No, she was chattering on the phone, looking innocent. Maybe Will, the mailroom clerk? I started to call out, but his name stuck in my throat.
    Cabeza. There was no question. He wasn’t going to get gone easily. No matter how many days and how many death faxes passed between us, I knew now that he’d be there, waiting for a correct.
     
    I was sucking the slice at the base of my palm when Jaime leaned over the top of my cubicle. “Nice work,” he said, holding up the late edition. “We’re finally in the clear.”
    He opened the paper to show me LaShanniah’s spread: LaShanniah in a gold bikini, LaShanniah in a glittering black gown, LaShanniah driving her gold-plated Humvee through Compton, and a candid at the beach with her last boyfriend, Bo-Charles of the boy band Flex. Then there was a large panoramic of fans during a candlelight vigil at her beached and busted yacht. My name wasn’t on it. The byline only read Curtis Wright.
    “You guys really gave us the whole deli counter,” he said.
    “Everything but the pickles.” I was about to tell Jaime that I could’ve delivered a whole platter of dills, if he’d given me a shot the first time. I had contacts for her stylist from her Edible Panties tour, and two phone calls