Chapter 3 Chapter 3 Meeting

Summarizing someone else's life in a few lines, Andrew has not done such a job for a long time.He was transferred to the newspaper's "International Affairs Department" two years ago.Andrew has always been particularly curious about life and the global order, as well as all things exotic. When computer screens replaced typesetting workers' workstations, every member of the writing team could see the content of the articles that would be published in the newspaper the next day.On several occasions, Andrew has noticed some analytical or common sense errors in articles in the international section.He pointed it out at the weekly editorial board meetings where all reporters attended, saving the newspaper several times from letters from irate readers and the embarrassment of publishing a correction after the fact.Andrew's abilities were slowly revealed, and Andrew made a choice without hesitation between the year-end bonus and the new promotion.

Now that he thought he was going back to writing a "biography column" again, as he liked to call his past work, Andrew's heart surged again; he even felt a tinge of nostalgia when he started writing for Valerie . Two hours later he had eight and a half lines in his hand.He entered them into his mobile phone and sent them to the parties. The rest of the day, Andrew tried to write another article discussing the possibility of a Syrian uprising, but all efforts were in vain.The occurrence of the uprising seemed to his colleagues almost unlikely, if not downright impossible. He can't concentrate, his eyes are always wandering between the computer screen and the quiet mobile phone.It was almost 5 o'clock when the phone screen finally lit up, and Andrew hurriedly grabbed the phone.Kong was overjoyed when the laundry informed him that his shirt had been washed.

It was already noon the next day when he received the following text message: "Next Thursday, 19:30. Valerie." He immediately replied: "Do you know the address?" A few seconds later he received a simple "yes", and Andrew felt a little sorry for his rashness. Andrew went back to work, and for the next seven days he lived abstaining from alcohol, assuming, of course, that people, like him, thought beer was too low in alcohol to count. On Wednesday, he went to the laundry to retrieve the coat he had delivered the day before, then went to buy a white shirt, and went to the barber to shave and wash his neck.Like every Wednesday night, Andrew goes to see his best friend Simon in a small tavern just before 21 o'clock. This tavern, although it doesn't look like much, has the best fish in the West Village.Andrew lived not far away, and the kitchen of the tavern became his canteen when he came home late from overtime, many times a week.Simon, as usual at the dinner table, lashed out at Republicans for preventing the president from implementing reforms that the people had already voted on.Andrew's thoughts ran far away. He scratched through the glass window and looked at the pedestrians and tourists walking on the street.

"Also, I can tell you a really big piece of news from a very reliable source. Barack Obama may have won the heart of Angela Merkel." "She's pretty." Andrew replied casually. "If you are in a trance because of a recent big news, I can forgive you, but if you met some girl, you must tell me immediately!" Simon was angry. "Neither," Andrew replied, "sorry, I'm a little tired." "Don't lie to me! I haven't seen you properly shaved since you stopped seeing that girl who was a head taller than you. Her name was Sally, if I remember correctly."

"It's Sophie, but it doesn't matter, it just proves how interested you are in my conversation. How can I blame you because you forgot her name, who let me spend only one hour with her at most?" A year and a half!" "She's so boring, I've never heard her laugh." Simon said again. "Because she never finds your bad jokes funny. Eat quickly, I want to go back to sleep." Andrew sighed. "If you don't tell me the cause of your troubles, I'll keep ordering dessert after dessert until the last day of my life." Andrew looked straight into his friend's eyes.

"Did you ever meet a girl in your teenage years that fascinated you?" he asked, beckoning the waiter to pay the bill. "I knew you didn't look like this for work at all!" "Don't say that, I'm writing on a particularly nasty subject, and the inside story is disgustingly nasty." "What subject?" "Professional secret!" Simon paid the bill and stood up. "Let's go for a walk, I want some fresh air." Andrew took his raincoat from the coat rack and caught up with his friend who was already waiting for him on the sidewalk. "Kathy Steinbeck," Simon muttered.

"Kathy Steinbeck?" "The girl who drove me crazy as a boy, you just asked me this question five minutes ago, have you forgotten?" "You never mentioned her to me." "You never asked me that either," Simon replied. "Valerie Lancer," said Andrew. "So you're not even interested in knowing what it was about Kathy Steinbeck that captivated me as a boy. You're just asking me so you can talk about your Valerie yourself." Andrew put his arms around Simon's shoulders and pulled him a few steps forward.Three steps lead exactly to the basement of a small brick house.He pushed open the door of Fedora Bar, where there had been a group of young artists in the past, such as Count Basie, Nagginger, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn et al, perform here.

"Do you think I only care about myself?" Andrew asked. Simon didn't answer. "You should say this factually, after years of dedicating myself to summarizing the lives of various obscure people, I am finally convinced that the day people will be interested in me must be the day I appear in my own obituary column." Andrew raised his glass, raised his voice and shouted: "Andrew Steelman, born in 1975, spent most of his life working for the famous New York Times... You see, Simon, that's why those doctors can't see themselves, it's their turn Anyone's hands shake when they're sick. However, it's common sense in the industry that modifiers should be reserved entirely for the dead. I'll come again....b. 1975, Andrew Steelman and The New York Times A long-standing relationship. His dizzying promotion led to him taking on the role of Writing Director in early 2020. His tireless drive has revived the newspaper and catapulted it into one of the most respected daily dailies in the world . . . Maybe that's a bit too much, isn't it?"

"You're not going to start all over again, are you?" "Be patient, let me finish, and I'll write one for you too, and you'll find it interesting." "At what age do you plan to die, I can calculate how long this nightmare will last?" "You know with the advancement of medical technology... Where did I just say that? Ah, yes, it is because of his relentless push, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Andrew Steelman won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for his work on ... er, well, I don't know what it is yet, but I can refine it later. And it led to his first monograph, the Widely acclaimed, bagged several prizes, and is still the subject of study by all prestigious universities."

"The title of this masterpiece is "On Journalist Humility." Simon chuckled. "At what age did you win the Nobel Prize?" "At the age of sixty-two... At the age of seventy-one, Steelman ceased to hold the position of general manager of the newspaper. He thus ended his illustrious career, and the following year..." "...arrested for manslaughter for suffocating his most loyal friend with idle talk." "You have no sympathy at all." "What should I sympathize with?" "I'm going through a strange period, my Simon; I'm overwhelmed by loneliness, which is unusual, because I can't enjoy life as a single."

"That's because you're almost forty years old!" "Thank you, Simon, I won't be forty for several years. The atmosphere in the newspaper office is not healthy," Andrew said again, "Sword of Damocles 2 seems to fall on our heads at any time. I just want to give my heart a little more comfort... who is your Kathy Steinbeck?" "My philosophy teacher." "It didn't occur to me that she was the object of your fascination...but she's not a girl anymore." "Life never seemed to go the way it should; when I was twenty I was swooning over a woman fifteen years my senior, and at thirty-seven it was a girl fifteen years my junior. " "That's because you haven't figured it out, my old friend." "Can you tell me more about your Valerie Lancer?" "I ran into her when I got out of the Marriott last week." "I know that." "No, you don't understand anything. I was madly in love with her in high school. I spent years trying to forget her when she snuck away from our hometown like a thief. Frankly, I even wondered if I had completely forgotten about her." "Aren't you disappointed to see her again?" "On the contrary, something has changed about her, but she turns out to be more distraught than ever." "Because she's already a woman, I'll explain to you another day! Did you just mean you're in love again? Andrew Steelman, love at first sight on the sidewalk of 40th Street, what amazing news!" "I mean I'm confused, and I haven't been in that situation for a long time." "Do you know how to see her again?" "I'll have dinner with her tomorrow night, and I'm as timid as I was when I was a teenager." "To be honest, I don't think this feeling of timidity has ever left us. Ten years after my mother passed away, my father met a woman in a supermarket. He was sixty-eight years old and his first The night before I asked that woman out to dinner, I drove him into town. He wanted to buy a brand new coat. In the fitting room of the clothing store, he kept repeating to me that he was going to be with him at the dinner table. What she said, and asked for my opinion. That was terrible. The story is that we are always at a loss for what to do with a woman who turns us off, and it has nothing to do with age." "Thank you, then I feel relieved about tomorrow." "I'm telling you this to remind you that you might do stupid things too, you might think your conversations are stupid, and it's likely that when you go home, you'll curse yourself for your performance tonight too bad." "Go on, Simon, it's nice to have close friends." "Wait a minute, I just want to help you make sure of one thing. Tomorrow night, make the most of this unexpected opportunity as much as you can. Just be yourself, and if you please her, she will like you." "How can a woman, an animal, rule and control us like this?" "You just have to turn your head and look around us, and see what's going on in this bar. Well, I'll tell you about me and my philosophy teacher another day. By the way, let's have lunch on Friday, I want to hear The most complete and detailed version. Of course, maybe not as detailed as your obituary." When they walked out of Fedora's together, the cool night air refreshed both of them.Simon jumped into a taxi, leaving Andrew to walk home alone. On Friday, Andrew told Simon that the night was exactly as he predicted, maybe worse than he said.Andrew concluded that it was likely that he was really in love with Valerie Lance all over again, and that things were going badly because they didn't talk for long before Valerie started repeating that she was already in someone else's place.Valerie didn't call him the next day, and she didn't call him the next week.Andrew felt very depressed.He worked at the newspaper all Saturday and asked Simon to play on the basketball court on the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Houston on Sunday.The two passed the ball numerous times without saying a word. Andrew's Sunday night was as depressing as every other Sunday night.Called for takeout from a Chinese restaurant, turned on the TV and flipped aimlessly between reruns of movies, hockey games, and feature-length cop dramas with sci-fi detectives solving dastardly murders.It was a bleak night, until it was almost 21:00, when the screen of his mobile phone suddenly lit up.It wasn't Simon's text, it was Valerie who wanted to move up their date and she had something to say to him. Andrew immediately responded directly to her that he would love to see her again a little earlier and asked when she would like to see her again. "Now." Then came another text telling him where to meet, at the corner of Avenue A and Ninth Street, across from Tompkins Square in the East Village. Andrew glanced at himself in the living room mirror.How long will it take him to turn back into human form?He hadn't changed out of his gym shorts and old polo shirt since he got back from playing with Simon, and now they were smelling so bad that a good shower seemed necessary.But Valerie's text clearly stated that it was urgent, which was a real headache.Andrew put on jeans and a clean shirt, fished his keys from the key bowl in the foyer, and hurried down the three steps of the building. The streets were empty, not a single pedestrian, let alone a taxi.Andrew ran toward Seventh Avenue, caught a taxi at the traffic light at the corner of Charles Street, and got into the cab just before the driver started again.He promised the driver a handsome tip if he could reach his destination within ten minutes. Sitting on the back seat of the bumpy car, Andrew regretted the promise just now, but the taxi did arrive earlier than he expected, and naturally the driver's tip was also a considerable amount. Valerie was waiting for him at the door of a closed cafe, "Pick me up", the name of which made Andrew smile for a moment.But only for a short while, because Valerie looked depressed. He stepped forward and Valerie slapped him hard. "You sent me across the city just to hit me?" he asked, rubbing his cheek. "What the hell did I do to be treated like this?" "My life was perfect until I met you in front of that damn bar, but now I don't know what the hell I'm in." Andrew felt a surge of heat engulfing him, and he thought he had just received the best slap of his life. "I wouldn't do that to you, a gentleman would never do that, but I can tell you," he said softly, looking into Valerie's eyes, "The past two weeks have been terrible for me." "I couldn't think of you for two whole weeks, Andrew Steelman." "When you left Poughkeepsie, Valerie Lancer, I thought about you day and night. This state lasted for about three...four years, maybe even longer." "That's in the past. I'm not talking about our teenage years. I'm talking about now." "It's the same now, Valerie. Nothing has changed, you haven't changed, what brought me here to see you again The reason hasn't changed." "That's what you said, but in fact you just want to take revenge on me, for everything I have caused you to suffer." "I don't know why you have such a strange idea. If you really think so, your perfect life before probably shouldn't make you happy as you said?" Before Andrew could realize what happened, Valerie put her arms around his neck and kissed him.The kiss on his lips was timid at first, then Valerie was bold.She let go of Andrew and looked at him with moist eyes. "I suck," she said. "Valerie, with the best intentions in the world, I don't understand what you just said to me." She moved closer to him again, this time kissing more fervently than before, and then she pushed him away again. "never mind." "Stop saying that, please!" "The only thing in this world that can save me is this kiss, it..." "How's it going?" Andrew asked, his heart beating the way he used to go to her after school. "Andrew Steelman, I long for you so much." "Sorry, not the first night, it's a matter of principle." He smiled as he answered. Valerie patted him on the shoulder, Andrew continued to smile silly, and Valerie held his hands. "What are we going to do in a minute, Ben?" "Let's go a little way together, Valerie, a little way maybe... if you never call me Ben again."