The Cure

Chapter 1

"It's the end of an era" said Gray's assistant over the phone as he continued making his way up 40th street. He was dodging pedestrians heading in the opposite direction including a headless Cookie Monster with a man's head sticking out, likely finishing his shift of taking pictures in Times Square. The phrase "end of an era" irritated Gray to no end, particularly in this context. "God, what an insufferably cliché thing to say" he thought. He wondered why people had to say idiotic things like this. Why if people truly had nothing to say would they not just protect their pride by saying nothing than these meaningless quips. "Frank is their senior most investigative reporter at the New York Times, not the leader of the Republic. Let the man retire with dignity" he continued thinking to himself. Gray was making his way through the spill over of tourists from the fringes of Times Square, a place which got its name from the paper, his employer, and still stood in magnificence against the backdrop of Madam Tussaud's, Bubba Gump's Shrimp, and other brightly colored shiny objects for visitors looking to find only in NY items shipped from China. Gray wasn't especially wistful of Frank's departure. This had less to do with his feelings about Frank who he considered a good friend and more to do with his lack of wistfulness about anything really.
"It's the end of Frank's era. Relax." He said to an elevator full of unknown colleagues now all turning their head to someone they didn't realize was on the phone.
"I am relaxed." He rolled his eyes and ended the call with the person he now realized was standing next to him. He turned with no amusement to see Lisa, an intern assigned as his assistant who for some reason still had her phone pressed against her ear. "Good morning, Mr. Cothran" she said, finally removing it with a neutral expression as she looked at some point far beyond the now closed elevator doors.
"You can just call me Gray, Lisa. Did we hear anything back on the FOI request? Also, Good morning." He adjusted his messenger bag and attempted to advance through the power of staring the digital display of the current floor as the elevator zipped past the first half or so of the building. Hearing nothing, he looked over at an unamused and possibly distracted young intern. Her eyes flashed a glance to his, uncomfortable with eye contact.
"Uh no, we're still waiting on that." They both returned their attention to the floor counter. "So about Frank..."
"About Frank."
"He was working on some Big Pharma case right?" Instead of answering, Gray just looked at her. She continued. "That's going to go to you, right? I mean, someone else has to pick that up if he's retiring." Gray just shrugged and returned his attention back to the floor counter.
"Might. Christy is going to make the decision on that one." It was quiet for another minute before he continued, "Yeah, those things always take a while" he sensed that she might be feeling nervous being in the watchful eye of her boss now trapped in a steel cage with her. "The Freedom of Information Act request" he said, reorienting her that he had switched back to what they were talking about earlier. "We should just sue the government at this point. Gets the information faster." The elevator opened. He stepped out first. "Sometimes we do" he added pointing his voice behind him where Lisa followed him by a couple paces. Gray walked into his office, encased in glass against the wall and left the door open. He delicately placed the strap of his messenger bag on a chair parked in front of a desk not at all resembling the same delicateness. Papers were strewn across every inch of it with futile Post-It notes calling attention to random magazines and folders barely clinging on to the documents for which they were at one time commissioned to maintain order.
Looking down at this mess, Gray demonstrated a special trick only he knew how to do by casually pushing some seemingly random grouping of documents and desk ornamentation away to reveal the one item he was looking for: The Senator Mitchell case folder, right under a Chinese take-out menu. For Gray, this convention of placing it so was to him no less manageable than a system that might have been staged for the box his desk came in. He knew where everything was, even if it was a health code violation. He didn't like to admit this, but people were like this for him as well. When Christy urged him to take on Lisa as an assistant, he broke through his reluctance not so much as a means to become more organized, but to give Lisa a shot at doing something useful at the paper, not that he thought she was useful for much. The rest of her career advancement was up to her. He did his part.
"You know that's a fire hazard, right?" Gray turned to see his colleague Tim standing at the doorway of his office carrying his laptop with him on his way to a glass cube they used as a conference room.
"Well get me a lighter and let's take care of that right now." Even when he was joking, he couldn't match the smile his colleague was giving him.
"Haven't seen you in a while, what are you working on these days?"
"Still the Senator Mitchell investigation."
"You're still on that thing?" Tim now stopped, keeping his elbow pointed at his destination. Gray shrugged as he pulled out his chair to sit down.
"When people say you've secretly flown on Epstein's plane with underage girls, there's usually some layers to peel back. So we're peeling. Never liked Mitchell before all this anyway to be honest. I'm actually looking forward to being done with it and moving on to something else."
The Mitchell case felt like a variation on a theme to Gray. Early in his career he was overjoyed to be trusted to participate in political investigations at the paper. Now that he was leading it, the work to expose political corruption felt almost cyclical now. Telling the public the paper had caught politicians in corruption scandals felt like an earnest declaration of discovering an already discovered species right in their natural habitat in a well documented area of the world. It was the aftermath of this hard work though, that took the wind out of his sails. It seemed that no matter what they uncovered, their work served more as a prompt to their PR teams to spin up new narratives to exonerate the politicians and move on. He wondered sometimes if this was turning him into a self-aware curmudgeon or if becoming said curmudgeon was causing him to think this way.
"Well, speaking of moving on to something else, you know it's Frank's last day tomorrow?" He did and nodded back to Tim. He found it hard to forget how someone in investigations whose reputation was only surpassed by his own had chosen now as his last week. Sensing an uncomfortable silence, Gray looked up and thought to himself "don't you dare fucking—",
"—End of an era!" Tim said going back on his way to the meeting room.
"Jesus Christ" Gray retorted making no effort to say it under his breath as he threw the case file back on his desk in disgust.