Thankfully, after another puff on his e-cigar, he soon did start explaining, leaning back in his chair with his shoes still on his desk. “Remember when Hilary did all that online dating stuff after college, before she met Chad?”
I did remember, and I nodded. When I was hired at the Press, Hilary had just been at the tail-end of a few years of online dating when she’d met her now-husband, Chad, in person, while standing in line at a coffee shop. Don had told me all about it.
“Well, all Hilary’s online dating was how I came to learn that wolf shifters, and other animal shifters as well, it seems, are actually real…and not just the urban legends that you hear kids talking about sometimes. See, back in those days after college, Hilary didn’t just do online dating. She also did a lot of ‘social meetups,’ they call them. One of these meetups was a thing called the ‘Agricultural Workers of the Midwest Social Meetup.’ It was at some fancy hotel in Chicago. Hilary and a few of her friends drove all that way just to go to this thing.”
“Well….” Sure, I was frowning, I leaned back in my chair a little. “Why? Farmers don’t exactly seem like Hilary’s type.”
I knew for a fact they weren’t. Just from what I’d heard about her, and from what I’d learned meeting her briefly a few times, Hilary was more into writer-and-artist types. Her husband, Chad, was a young, extremely gifted, by all accounts, university literature professor.
In response to my question, Don said that Hilary and her friends had gone to the agricultural meetup in Chicago on a lark. “See, they’d heard a rumor. And the rumor was that the guys who went to these things weren’t really farmers unable to meet women in their own isolated communities. The word was that these men were animal shifters. The agricultural thing was said to be just a cover for what these men are really doing in their communities.”
“Which is what?”
I had a feeling that Don had just been about to explain, but my reporter instinct was kicking in, compelling me to ask questions. Possibly realizing this, Don just patiently answered me after another puff on his e-cigar, exhaling the water vapor in rings this time.
“The rumor was that the ‘farmers’ who go to these agricultural meetups are really shifters who do work as farmers, but while protecting their communities all around the Midwest from ‘enemy’ animal shifters at the same time. I think Hilary said that they’re supposedly even working for the government, some of them. Hilary first heard about all this in a post online, but when she went back to try to find the post, it had been deleted. Possibly by the government, I think.”
“Or by someone who’d posted drunk or high and regretted it later.”
Don shrugged, though frowning, clearly a little irritated. “Maybe. You want to hear the rest of the story, though?”
Realizing that I did, and being mindful that he was my boss, I said yes, and he continued.
“So, after this mysterious post, Hilary and her friends decided to drive to Chicago. They were into a lot of paranormal-type stuff at the time, and it just seemed like a good exploratory-type expedition, Hilary told me later. She and her friends were all still single at the time, too, and I think they were all a little curious about what kind of men these possible shifters were. So, anyway, they drove to Chicago and went to this meetup at a fancy hotel.”
Don “ashed” his e-cigar into the cut-glass ashtray, tapping it on the edge a few times, took another little puff, and then “ashed” again. I was just beginning to think he wasn’t going to continue in his tale when finally, he did.
“So, Hilary and the girls went to the meetup. It was dinner, drinks, some dancing, all that. They learned a lot about agriculture, Hilary said. None of them found a love match, though, or even anything close, even though Hil did say that many of the men were very attractive. There was just no chemistry, though, apparently. ‘None of them would talk Foucault with me,’ Hil said.
‘Well, what the hell did you expect, honey,’ I said when she told me this. ‘Whether they’re shifters or real farmers, not many people are into French philosophy; that’s just a fact.’
“Now, Sable, this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, of course. In fact, just the other day, when Elaine and I were driving through Ohio to visit her sister, we stopped at this toll booth, and guess what the toll-taker says when I handed him the toll in all nickels?”
Normally, I might have been curious, but at present, I wanted to hear more about Hilary’s experience at the meetup. Fortunately for me, our conversation was interrupted by the sound of his intercom buzzing right then, sparing me a response to his question; and after he’d buzzed his secretary to hold all his calls for the time being, he asked me what we’d been talking about.
“Hilary’s experience at the dating meetup,” I said immediately.
“Oh, right,” Don said. “So, Hilary and friends didn’t have any love matches that night. Nor did they see or hear any clues or proof regarding the rumored existence of animal shifters of any kind. So, a bit dejected, they all left the meetup at the hotel ballroom around midnight, intending to get some vegetarian Indian food at a place down the block. Apparently, the food they had in the ballroom was all chicken, shrimp, and steak-type stuff, and you know Hil and her friends don’t eat meat. ‘You shouldn’t eat it, either, Dad,’ Hillary always says. ‘With your cholesterol.’ ’’
“So, then, what happened after they left the ballroom?”
Don puffed on his e-cigar a few times, then slowly blew water vapor “smoke” rings up at the ceiling, making me pay for my interruption, before returning his gaze to me. “So, they left the ballroom and went out to the parking lot. And that was when Hilary saw proof of the shifters. It was pretty dim, now, mind you, after midnight, but the parking lot lights were all she and her friends needed to see three enormous gray wolves streaking across the parking lot, heading for the highway, as if they were just going to run straight home, maybe just adjacent to the highway or something.”
“Well, could the ‘wolves’ have been dogs or something?”
Based on his slight frown, I had a feeling that Don maybe wasn’t appreciating all my questions, but I couldn’t help it. I was in full reporter mode by this time, intent on gathering all the facts. And after a long moment, he gave me some more, or at least some more of Hilary’s story.
“The animals Hilary saw could have been dogs, but she swears they weren’t. She swears they were large gray wolves, and I believe her. Her friends swore on it, too.”
“Well, then, why didn’t they call the police? Or wild animal control at least?”
Once again, Don hesitated in answering my question, raising his gaze to the ceiling while he blew another “smoke” ring. “Well…Hilary and two of her friends had had a bit to drink that night, and they were afraid that the authorities wouldn’t believe them. Their one friend who hadn’t been drinking had been rifling around in her purse at the time that Hilary and the others had seen the wolves streaking away, so she couldn’t back up their story.”
Pausing, Don blew one more “smoke” ring before finally looking at me again. “You know Hilary’s a level-headed girl, Sable, even when she’s had a few drinks, like at last year’s office Christmas party. Remember?”
I did. At the previous year’s Christmas party, press staff members had been encouraged to bring family members due to the previous year’s dismal attendance. Don and his wife Elaine had brought Hilary and Chad; to make a very long story short, the night had ended in most everyone in attendance being quite intoxicated and a real, eight-foot-tall Douglas fir Christmas tree catching on fire. When I’d emerged from a teetering trip to the restroom, I’d seen the tree all ablaze, with Hilary smothering it with a blanket with one hand, and calling 911 with her free hand.
Chad had been fast asleep in a swivel chair nearby. Don, Elaine, and many others had been laughing hysterically.
“I’m a new mom,” Hilary had told me after firefighters had arrived to finish putting out the blaze, which had spread to the supposedly flame-retardant ceiling tiles. “And you don’t just snap out of hyper-vigilant, responsible new mom mode just because you’re drunk.”
Not a moment after she’d made this statement, Don had waved his e-cigar at the firefighters, assuring them that he wasn’t the one who’d caused the flames. “See? It’s all water vapor. No burning of anything involved. It’s all just a simulation.”
Back in the present, I told Don that I knew that Hilary was a “level-headed girl,” and that I was sure she’d been the same the night in Chicago, adding that if she insisted that she’d seen wolves, then I believed her.
“But, then, why are you just now telling me about this? Wouldn’t it have made more sense for you to tell me a few years ago, or whenever this all happened, so that I could have investigated and gotten any possible ‘scoop’ while it was still fresh?”
With his mouth twitching with some secret-seeming sort of little grin, Don took a bottle of Coca-Cola from a drawer, poured some into a shot glass on his desk, and then drained the “shot” in a gulp before responding.
“The reason I’m just now telling you about all this is because there wasn’t much for you to investigate before now. It would’ve just been you doing some pointless online research about some deleted post, and then interviewing Hilary and her friends about what they saw while they were admittedly intoxicated in Chicago.
But now….” Don paused for a pour of Coca-Cola and another shot. “Now you can do some real investigating, because there’s another ‘agricultural’ meetup going on, this one in Ohio. Toledo, to be exact. Hilary says they only have one every couple of years, in a different city in the Midwest every time, as a way to meet brides to bring into their different shifter communities. This is what the deleted post she read those years ago said, anyway…that meeting brides is their ultimate goal of these meetups.
“But now it’s your turn to investigate, get the real story, and make a name for yourself in this business. That’s what you want, isn’t it? No more car crashes and house fires; this will be much more exciting. This will be real investigative journalism. A scoop like this might just save our struggling little newspaper, too, Sable.
“Just think of that. Just think of the possibilities. You making a name for yourself, me getting one final feather in my cap as an editor, maybe even the largest one yet, and us, together, maybe even saving the historical institution that is the Detroit News Press. An exclusive story revealing proof of the existence of shifters to the world just might do it. What do you think? As long as you’re willing to leave ‘home, sweet home’ in Detroit for a little bit, we might just be able to make this work.”
I’d been born and raised just a mile or so outside the affluent Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield, and then I’d moved to Detroit, proper, when I’d landed my job at the Press not long after college graduation. Except for a few out-of-state family vacations growing up, and a few trips to Canada during college, I hadn’t really traveled outside of Michigan much. I’d never been to Toledo, or any part of Ohio at all.
However, I was currently thinking that I might not be opposed to the idea, especially if it involved getting the once-in-a-lifetime, career-making scoop that Don was talking about. When I didn’t respond right away to what he’d just said, he spoke again, now with his feet off his desk and his upper body leaning over it.
“Do you remember how, your first week here at the Press, you said something to me about the ‘simulation’ of my cigar, here?”
He gave his e-cigar a little twirl in the air, as if just to make sure I saw it, and I nodded.
“Well, think back to your days in college, when you first learned about Jacques Derrida, or whenever it was that you learned about his ideas of ‘postmodern simulation.’ Because now, if you accept this job assignment, you’re really about to live those ideas.
Going ‘undercover,’ connecting with a shifter, and maybe even marrying him, pretending to be his loving wife for a time, at least until you get the scoop we need…well, it’ll all be the ultimate ‘simulation.’ If you’re willing to do it, that is. If you’re willing to launch your career as a reporter into the stratosphere, possibly saving our old Press at the same time. Are you?”
Waiting for the first comment……
Please log in to leave a comment.