Circle kicker

I killed the President of the United States of America today.

I also coordinated today’s staff meeting and convinced our intern, Sean, to get Chinese food for lunch. Quite a productive day, really. What else are you going to do on a Wednesday?

Oh, right, the President. My friends helped me with that one. Don’t worry, there wasn’t any blood. You see, we’re staff writers for the Worldwide Press, a wire news company. Newspapers from around the world buy stories from us because we’re cheaper than the hometown writers that they’d have to pay a liveable wage.

I’m Wes Northcutt. I’ve been working here for a few years and it’s nice because, well, I have a job. That’s about the only thing journalists have to cling to now. The Op-Ed Editor — my boss —Jameson Wilkins, also pledged at Kappa Delta Psi 20 years before me. I knew those dues would come in handy.

Whenever there’s a high-profile celebrity who’s at risk of kicking the bucket, we pre-write the obituaries so we can be the first with the story. Jameson got the idea when teen singing sensation Sheba went on that coke binge in March. Throughout newsrooms, there was a death pool, predicting when she’d overdose. When she’d drink a fifth of high-end vodka, get behind the wheel and have her head impaled by the window wiper of a Honda Civic. When she’d contract HIV. When she’d just off herself. Journalists have a sick sense of humor. Most of us have looked into the eyes of enough prisoners of war, enough kids from broken homes, enough widows to regard any sort of tragedy with comedy. A coked up singer hell-bent on self-destruction is just a joke, really.

I had April 20, and I would’ve won a couple hundred bucks, but she went to rehab the week before.

Wilkins, after drinking from the fifth of vodka in his desk, got the idea that we should just have these things ready so we can beat the competition. And, in this country, who is more high-profile than the President? With the job market tanking even further and the middle class getting fucked, President Cooper just kept going along like nothing happened. It was his last year in office, anyway. Senioritis took over. He sent more aid to war-torn Saudi Arabia, to the United Arab Emirates. Who needs to take care of the country you were elected to appoint when you can just give them more oil? Of course, when you’ve got more money than God, you tend to not care about the guy working 40 hours a week.

My offering was relatively tame:
“Drake Cooper, the former President of the United States of America, was shot and fatally wounded this morning in Chicago. Secret Service immediately apprehended XXXXXXX, a XX-year old man from XXXXXX. Cooper is survived by his wife, Florence, his three children, Marla, Eric and Drake Jr., and his father, Flynn.”

Lauren, in the cubicle next to me, had Cooper being struck in the head by an advisor. Javier, five desks down, choked him with a piece of chicken. Fred, that perverted old fuck, killed off the President through autoerotic asphyxiation. He also thought Sheba would die while screwing her drummer after doing extacy.

No one else is supposed to know about it. Well, not the general public. We’re supposed to be the gatekeepers and watchdogs of this country. Not the angels of death for pop singers.

So I submitted that graph about the President an hour before deadline, plus wrapped up the page design earlier than I expected. It was already five to midnight, and I figured I should head home. I’m probably wanted for murder, ya know? I was able to fight off sleep long enough to make it to my apartment.

The next day was awfully routine. Movie star Brady Radinsky got a DUI last night, driving 115 on the freeway. I figured one of his girlfriends would “accidentally” poison him, give him one too many Valiums. Percocets. Vicodins. Xanaxes. Whatever’s in style in Hollywood this week.

Lauren, in the cubicle next to me, had him being Tazered and beaten to death by the LAPD after an hour and a half-long car chase. Javier, five desks down, gave him Hepatitis. Fred, that perverted old fuck, killed him off while he was suffocating under a grossly overweight hooker. He also thought the President would die by autoerotic asphyxiation.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who got tired of Fred. Around 12:30, Wilkins called him into the office and shut the door. We all knew that couldn’t mean anything good. Not that it was a shock or anything. In this business, the bottom line rules. Just having a job is an accomplishment in itself. Make too much, become too valuable, and you’ll probably become the first to go when the publisher sees revenue taking another dive. Fred was easily replaceable with Sean, or some college kid they could pay $9 an hour. He’d really gotten kind of angry at us younger people. Just bitter at the world, you know? He had to work his ass off to become a journalist, selling papers as a kid, then becoming a minimum-wage copy editor and working his way up. We basically walked in from college because we were cheap labor and could put together a sentence. He hated that, and the fact that we didn’t have to walk five miles to work in the snow, uphill both ways, of course. God, he was irritating.

So Fred comes out of the office and closes the door behind him. He has the look of devastation, of vulnerability for once. I almost feel sorry for the guy. Then he walks by my desk, the insufferable smell of Pall Malls following him. Correction — I don’t feel sorry for him. Fred checks his e-mail, packs up his desk, and gets ready to leave.

“Finally,” I whispered to Lauren. She smiled, stifling a giggle.

Fred heard that, somehow, and turned around to me. He shot me a look that immediately jarred me. He had to have known this day was coming. Maybe he had a plan. He’d blow up the building. He’d pull out a gun and hold us hostage. He’d tell us to go fuck off. I was scared for a moment, but he just turned back, shook his head and muttered something.

After that, it was back to work, because, well, it had to be. I finished up my column on Governor Wright’s latest plan to solve this economic crisis, checked MySpace for a bit, then clocked out around 4. It was Wilkins’ night to layout the section, so maybe I could go to bed at a decent hour this time. I got home, watched a sitcom or two, had some leftovers and a Corona and went to bed.

The phone rang at 5:11 a.m., about two hours before I wanted to get up.

“Hello?” I was able to say. If I’m getting called at 5:11 in the morning, it better be good.

“Wes?” It was Lauren. Yeah, this could be good. “Wes, are you up?”

“No.”

“Turn on the TV. Channel 8. Now.” Not what I was hoping to hear.

There was Fred. That bushy snow-white hair on his wrinkled face, smiling for once. I wasn’t really awake enough to process what he was saying, but I was thrown into consciousness after reading the headline on the screen.

WORLDWIDE PRESS WRITER PLANS TO KILL PRESIDENT?

Good morning to you, too, Fred. He told the Botox-faced news anchor everything. That I wrote this obituary for the President. That I had done it for other people. Of course, he left out Lauren and Javier. He told them that I was serious. They trusted him, because, well, he was a journalist and it was sensational. They showed the blurb I wrote.

“Drake Cooper, the former President of the United States of America, was shot and fatally wounded this morning in Chicago. Secret Service immediately apprehended Wes Northcutt, a 30-year old man from Decatur. Cooper is survived by his wife, Florence, his three children, Marla, Eric and Drake Jr., and his father, Flynn.”

That’s plagiarism, Fred.

The story was all over the place. Every channel had it. It was all over the internet, with my mug shot, the same one I’ve got on my media badge.

I became paranoid. I had to leave town. Leave the country.

But first, I had to go by the office and clear off any more evidence. I picked a collared shirt off the floor, found a pair of jeans and some flip-flops. I grabbed my Ray Bans and headed for the door. Hopefully they haven’t found my address yet. I’m unlisted, of course.

I drove for what seemed like three hours. It could’ve been three minutes. There were police cars parked outside the building. This can’t be good. I walked inside. My key card to get to the editorial offices wasn’t working, so I jumped the turnstile. The security guard was watching The Today Show, so he didn’t notice. I speedwalked to my desk, moving right by Lauren and Javier, who were scared to make eye contact with me. They knew I was gone, they didn’t want to get caught up in the mess, too.

Wilkins stopped me as I was about to sit down.

“You know we can’t have you here anymore. The secret’s out,” he said. “We’ve put your belongings in a banker’s box.”

“Did you delete—”

“Yeah. It’s all gone. Don’t worry. Just go.”

As I turned around, headed for the door, the full gravity of the situation still hadn’t hit me until I glanced at Lauren’s computer.

Wes Northcutt, the former Worldwide Press staff writer, died in a shootout this morning with the Chicago Police Department in front of the Worldwide Press headquarters. Northcutt is survived by…