20 December 2003

Office on M Street

It is two days to the Solstice, the start of Winter, and five to Christmas. I am a little blurry, not much, from the Coconut Rum and ginger ale cocktails that John had been serving at his party down the hall. He was half of a sweet young couple starting out bravely in the world. What John didn't have in hosting skills he more than made up for in enthusiasm. He bustled around and I tasted the sickeningly sweet rum. It wasn't bad, fine for the season, though I knew anything that sweet was going to be trouble in the morning. Leaksmy is John's wife. She is a pretty dark woman who has seen a lot on the long road from her native Cambodia to the little apartment here on Arlington Boulevard.

There is a handsome picture of her father as a Colonel in the Royal Cambodian Army, fierce opponent of the Khmer Rouge right up until the moment when the senior officers fled with their cash and kids an hsi troops melted away. A man of honor and integrity, a man who bet on the Americans in the big SE Asia Sweepstakes. He lost on that one, but at least got away with the lives of his children, if not his parents.

Leaksmy said they never did find out about them, or even where or if they are buried. That means a lot in their culture and I could hear sadness in her voice. I thought about the piles of skulls in the shrines near the killing fields. Now she was working for State, investigating the sale of children for the sex trade in the region. "Tough job" I observed. "Hard to stay objective."

She looked back at me and nodded. "Yes," she said. Her brown eyes were liquid and deep. "It could have been me."

I was tired. It had been a big day. I left work just after lunch and was only moderately surprised that my son had agreed to participate in an adventure at an office on M Street in the District. He took the subway down to the stop where I was working and got off there just a bit early. We got back on the train and traveled into the District, getting off at Farragut West. I figured we were early enough that we could enjoy the walk. We went up the escalator and looked at the pigeons and the hurrying Christmas shoppers.

"This is where we got off when we were going to the White House" I said. "Which of course really wasn't the White House, it was the Old Executive Office Building next door, or the New ugly red building down the street. They all belong to the President, anyway." My son shrugged. He had not been awake that long and he yawned. He is enjoying the time off from College.

He was hungry and I suggested a Hebrew National hot-dog ("We answer to a Higher Authority"). The Ethiopian vendor sold it to him. I enjoyed watching this improbably tall six-foot-two son of mine gobble a hot-dog in about five bites. We wandered along the street, hands in pockets against the chill breeze. Small piles of stubborn ice were all that remained from the storm we had the day he returned from school.

I pointed out some of the deranged people on the street, or the disheveled man with the yellow and white beard with the large piss-stain down the front of his baggy trousers. Given the season, he could have been Santa gone horribly wrong. We found the building on the block between 20th and 21st Streets. There was a bored receptionist who is the gate guard to the elevators that go from street level on M Street to the Third floor suite of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

There is a steel door and a buzzer. I lean down and look into the camera and push the button. There is a pause and a response, and a disembodied voice asked me my business. My son looked at me with that imperturbable look of youth observing age. This was just another office on M Street.

"I'm Vic Socotra" I announced. "I have a three o'clock with the World Service."

The door popped open and we stood in the little waiting area. There was a fully equipped kitchen in front of us with a couple gigantic thermos jug for coffee and one of those white electric boilers for the tea. It felt right, a place you could pound out lead items or re-heat Chinese food if you got caught up in covering some breaking event.

Sophia is a lithe black girl who ushered us into the waiting area and Melissa is the receptionist-cum-den mother who took my son under her wing. She ensured that my coffee was just white enough as though I were a Brit, and not as American as she was.

Sitting in the modern blonde wood chairs in the reception area I rummaged in my briefcase and glanced at the script. Can't be too professional on these things, I thought, but a growing sense of doom overcame me. I realized I didn't have the two lead items I had discussed with Dan, the host of Morning Update. I only had the stuff I was to use as a back-up. "Shit! Professionalism my ass!" My mind whirled and then realized if I could get on the net the e-ails that I had sent to the World Service would still be there and I could just print them on-site, like I had planned it that way. Sophia helped me log on, and showed me the printer where it would spit out the script. I heard my son talking to Wanda in the background and I am praying for the electrons to go from the keyboard in Washington to the AOL server farm in Virginia and back to the printer across the room.

Sophia was directed by a stern young man to get us to the studio.

Sophia urged us into studio "B." "A" has two important gentlemen of unknown origin and they were already on the air, a matter of some concern to the engineer as the soundproof closed behind us with a little "whoosh" like a vault door. Sophia called London, the reverse of what I thought it would be, "London Calling" and all that. She picked up a headset and spoke into the microphone on the gimbaled mount with two banks of controls on either side and a little space in the middle for my vignettes.

Dan's voice was warm and melodious under the headset. With each word the Vu meters shot their needles to the right. They were everywhere on the panel. "You are working late tonight, Dan" I said, by way of introduction, and he said, well, in that rich tone with the full vowels, "it is only partly work, I'm at home."

And so, Washington calling London, I spoke the tales, not to fast and not too much emotion, just matter of fact enough. I finished the first one and then paused, coughed and sipped some coffee. Dan said it was OK. Then we riffled quickly through four more, about life in this town and a time when generals prepared to leave other countries with just their cash, clothes and families. One extra tale I brought along wound up on the cutting room floor, as if radio had one, but perhaps I will get a chance to use it later. Dan seemed encouraging.

As we were finishing, Dan asked me for my social security information, and full name, which was a bit queer, being on the air with a living room in London. Dan explained. He said they were going to pay me. And there it was, I'm a paid correspondent of the BBC. Five vignettes in thirty-two minutes. When the connection was broken and I hung up the headphones I looked at my watch. I couldn't believe it. Just over a half an hour from set up. Amazing.

No one paid any particular note to our departure from the newsroom, but Melissa gave my son a nested stack of BBC hats on the way out. He didn't know what to do with them, and he handed the hats to me. I put them in my briefcase and punched the button on the elevator. I was on top of the world.

"So what did you think?" I asked him as got on the elevator.

"I don't know. I couldn't hear anything except you."

"Shoot," I said. "You missed the best part. Where do you want to eat?"

We walked in silence along M Street, looking at restaurants. There was Moroccan at the corner, and the Sign of the Whale were the K Street lawyers and the bums hang out. We turned the corner at 19th street and headed downtown. He didn't see anything interesting, either haute cuisine or American. We were crossing L Street when I saw the red façade of a place in the middle of the block. Mackey's Public House is at 1823 L St. NW, and it used to be called Samantha's, a part of the Blackie's House of Beef empire. The original Blackie's opened for business in 1946, and was a hangout during the Kennedy administration, but by the first Bush regime it seemed a tired place with only moderately decent food. It wasn't trying very hard. That was not true with Mackey's.

"Come on, son" I said. This is a place that is completely authentic, a modern Irish bar without any of the bullshit. No leprechauns." He nodded.

Mackey's is a few steps down from street level and the wood is warm and welcoming after the cold. There was a nice crowd at the bar, but we took a booth in the back. It smelled like corned beef and cigarette smoke and Guinness Stout. They do a nice lunch business and steady happy hour trade, but this was in between and it was quiet. I ordered a vodka martini, up, and my son ordered the chicken pot pie.

When it arrived it was massive, golden brown, with garlic potatoes and a mound of fresh green peas and corn. He tried valiantly, but could only get through half of it. I sipped the martini and looked at my son.

"It is only right to finish a bit with the British by going to an Irish place…"

My son looked at me and pushed the plate away from him. "C'mon, Dad. Let's get a move on. I have places to go."

"And people to see" I finished for him. We walked three blocks to the Metro and caught the Orange Line in the direction of Vienna. It was crowded enough that we had to stand in the aisle. "I'm going to bail at Ballston and get my car," I said, using the low tone one reserves for subway travel. The car emptied of commuters and shoppers as we passed into the Commonwealth from the District, and by the time we reached my stop he could sit down. " I said. "Travel safety."

My son looked at me from under his reversed ball-cap.

"OK, Dad. See you later." He sat down. As I hit the door I heard him say thanks. Then the doors closed and the train pulled out. I could see the logo on the front of his hat facing backwards. Then the train was gone and I discovered I had lost my Metro pass. It still had four bucks on it.

I didn't care.