“Oh, no, this is fine.”
“Great.” Her smile faded as she turned her attention to Lou’s office and raised her voice. “Lou! The new girl’s here.”
She paused, as if listening, but I didn’t hear a reply.
“I’m sure he’ll be out in a minute. You can get settled. I’d show you around, but there’s not much to show. We’re a pretty small operation. Do you have your own laptop?” She glanced around. “We probably have an extra one around here somewhere but if we do, it’s a piece of garbage. I recommend using your own.”
“I have my own.” I put my bag down on the empty metal desk. It had seen better days. The bottom drawer was dented—I doubted it would open—and there were rust-ringed dings on the legs.
But it was fine. I was here for a paycheck, not for luxurious surroundings.
The front door opened and a lanky guy with a brown mullet and an attempt at a mustache came in. He wore a faded Led Zeppelin t-shirt, skinny jeans, and a thin maroon scarf around his neck.
“Ah, Ledger, you decided to grace us with your presence today,” Sandra said. “This is the new girl, Audrey.”
“Hey.” Ledger barely glanced my direction before dropping into his chair. His phone seemed to appear out of nowhere and he leaned back, already scrolling.
“See?” Sandra gestured toward him. “That’s why I call him the useless intern. He doesn’t do much.”
He glared at her over the top of his phone. “I do work.”
“Since when?”
“I did research for an article.”
“That was a month ago.”
He shook his head, his attention still on his phone. “You guys need to check your expectations. I have a lot of homework.”
“It’s summer break.”
“Yeah, and I deserve a break.”
Sandra met my eyes and shrugged. “He surprises us once in a while but mostly he just sits there. Lou doesn’t care because he’s an intern and we aren’t paying him.”
I slowly lowered myself into my chair. “Okay…”
“We’re probably not making the best impression, but what can I say? We’re a small-town newspaper trying to survive in a post-newspaper era. You’ve got Lou, who’s been here forever and won’t let the thing die. Then there’s me, who thought it would be fun to get a job a few years ago since my kids had to go and grow up on me. And Ledger, here, who’s been working on his journalism degree over at Tilikum College for what, six years?”
“Five and a half,” he said.
“As you can see, we’re desperately in need of someone like you.”
“What is my role supposed to be, exactly?” I asked. “Lou wasn’t very specific.”
“Well,” Sandra said and hesitated, like she had to think about it first. “I handle announcements—weddings, babies, obits. I also do the copy editing and proofreading, plus the bookkeeping and other administrative stuff. Lou oversees things from an editorial standpoint and spends most of his time trying to convince advertisers to pay us. Ledger doesn’t do much, so that leaves you with– pretty much everything else.”
I blinked a few times. “Everything else?”
She smiled. “Don’t worry, our readership isn’t picky. Do you have a camera? We definitely have one lying around here somewhere, although the camera on your phone is probably better.”
“A camera? I’m not a photographer.”
Before Sandra could reply, Lou’s door opened. He was bigger than he’d seemed during my interview—tall with a mid-section that strained the buttons on his short-sleeved shirt. I couldn’t tell if his gray stubble was intentional or if he’d just forgotten to shave this morning and although he still had some hair on his head, it was clearly thinning.
“Good, the new girl’s here.” His voice was rough as gravel. “Audrey, right?”
I stood, ready to offer my hand. “Yes, hi, it’s nice to—”
“Come in.”
He disappeared back into his office. I glanced at Sandra. She gave me an encouraging smile, so I followed Lou.
His office smelled pleasantly of paper and ink, calling to mind elementary school paper m?ché projects using torn newspaper as our medium. What had to have been some of the earliest editions of the Tribune, dating back to the early nineteen hundreds, hung on the wall in mismatched frames, and his desk was littered with stacks of paperwork and mail. Although he had a computer, a vintage typewriter sat on the console behind his chair, and somehow it looked like it fit the vibe better than any modern technology.