Striking the Sun – All Chapters
Susan turned over the sheet of paper again. The list of her duties was already blotted with ticks and notes and doodles.
For a while after she was put on the G Magazine project she worked hard, and with reasonable success, even drumming up a small amount of interest in the magazine’s launch on social media, but she’d never gotten recognition from within the office, and the external recognition was too small to make her effort worthwhile.
The new set of set of targets she’d found herself confronted with would improve her productivity, but wouldn’t address the more significant problems she was having. It was a list derived by people who didn’t understand her job, and ultimately only she could know whether she’d completed the checklist satisfactorily, otherwise it’d be judged entirely on terms dictated extant to her expertise. She could neglect to complete it day after day and continue as she was, only ever hitting the targets Nathan wanted.
So why didn’t she? Why did she insist on doing everything her way?
Susan was making quick progress in today’s afternoon task, writing a byline for the G Magazine’s inaugural edition. The jokes flowed, witticisms spilling onto the page. And then the tapping stopped abruptly and she stared at the screen, chewed her fingernail for a minute or so.
She couldn’t remember things very well these days and it scared her. She’d know what it was she was trying to think of, but her mind wouldn’t react. It was like a lame limb. These moments had become frighteningly common the past year. She punched out an ellipsis to remind her there was a word missing, then continued to type.
“Susan.” The voice came from Jonah’s office. “Susan?”
Jonah was sat in his office alone, and when he saw her he looked flustered, then apologetic. Susan sat down on the other side of his desk.
“I agree with him, you know. I don’t like him any more than you do, but he’s right. The G Magazine is the only thing that matters at the moment. Joshua Collins says it’s important to him that we include a glossy magazine in the Sunday edition, and he’s the reason we’re all here,” Jonah said.
Susan already knew this detail. Joshua Collins had recently taken on a renewed interest in the running of the paper. The G Magazine idea had come directly from him, a fact Nathan had revealed only after Susan had resisted. For a while she’d hoped the paper’s owner would bring a rare sanity to an office project, but his involvement seemingly only ran as far as fortnightly calls with Jonah and Nathan to keep him updated in the run up to the launch. After a call, the demands from Jonah would come in fast, a panicked streak of something that needed to be done immediately to placate one of Joshua Collins’s most trusted colleagues. Susan now recalled the one day they cleaned the entire office because Nathan was going to do a conference call with an executive on whichever coast of the United States it was, and this suit would maybe want to be virtually shown around the office over webcam.
“It’s a vanity project,” Susan said. Nobody had ever said it out loud, but Susan had long been convinced that Joshua Collins owned the newspaper just so he could tell people he owned a newspaper, and he didn’t seem to mind losing however much money they were hemorrhaging every year for the privilege.
“I don’t know about that. I think he knows he’s found a real gem here and he’s brought together a plan to make us profitable. Even if it is? All the more incentive to give him what he wants. I’m fighting for all our jobs every single day.”
“But we barely have the resources to put out the newspaper as it is.”
“We work well within our resources. Joshua agrees. I think our product is great, and if we pull together, the G Magazine will be great too. If it is, I’m sure old Josh will increase our budget.” Jonah said.
“I just think the paper is bad,” Susan said, and immediately knew what Jonah would reply, because she’d heard it before.
“It’s not. And so what? In the UK, bad newspapers don’t seem to have problems selling copies. Even thinly veiled racism and typographical errors aren’t prohibitive. We’re on the brink of turning a corner here, that’s why it’s so important.”
“I suppose,” Susan said. Maybe she should’ve chosen her words better. The Globe was bad, but its worst sin was being patently uninteresting. The paper lacked any sort of drive. Almost everything they published was a press release, usually
Even the events the journalists covered in person were the ones no other journalists would touch, like guerrilla film nights in abandoned churches. Jonah McLeod said his precursor, an old editor awash in booze and bullying, had tried to call this their path to success, the niche they were carving out, making a killing covering the things you didn’t see in other papers.
It was true vanity sold. People would buy the paper if it had their faces in. When or if they read the rest of the paper later, though, they’d find it was dull, a thin rag full of advertorials that failed to inspire or educate. Who would ever buy a second copy?
“Nathan will be taking on a lot more responsibility in the office from now on and I need you to listen to his requests.”
“Was this your decision or his?”
Jonah hesitated. “His, and I’m thankful for the help.”
Susan stood up to leave.
“Joshua Collins could grow bored of his project, you know. He’s already delegating to his executives, and they’re not as fixated on our newspaper as he is. One day they’ll drive the budget lower, run a skeleton staff, to free up budget elsewhere.” Jonah said. “They already asked me to clear out the old copier room to use as their London office when they’re in town.”
“I’m doing my best,” she said, and went back to her computer.
She wished she could remember the name of the newspaper’s parent company, a corporation with a triple-barrelled name, one merged with so many other companies its revenue streams drew from diverse tributaries all over the world. The CEO usually took a hands-off approach to his vanity project, and left it to be managed by a crack team of his executives, who set a modest annual budget and then mostly left it alone as an expenditure they weren’t allowed to correct.
She’d bought the hype once. Flush with ideas for the new, dynamic version of the Globe, she’d put in modest proposals to produce content she’d described as ‘youthful’ and ‘electrifying’, then watched the proposals get passed around by senior people whose actual job titles she’d never been privy to over on the west, or was it east, coast of the United States. With time differences and the parent company’s reasonable disinterest in managing the paper, the requests petered out long after the events she’d planned to cover had taken place, which only made content worse, more regionally restricted to London.
Perhaps Joshua Collins would be upset if he learned how his organization had stripped her of her ambition and enthusiasm. Perhaps not.
She opened the by-line for the first edition of the G Magazine where she’d left off, and stared at the ellipses she’d left in place of a word.
Her brain was sometimes like a brick wall when she tried to think of words, and not having quite the right word on your tongue is the scourge of a person expected to write coherently for a living. Later she’d remember, long after it was relevant to her any more, and she found some solace in that these facts weren’t forgotten forever, but her brain wasn’t nimble any more. Something was wrong with its indexing. Searching for information was unresponsive.
She felt stupid a lot when she knew she wasn’t, she just had an incredibly inconvenient affliction. She blamed it on the unchallenging lifestyle she led, rarely writing more than necessary at work and then coming home to watch TV, a life of boredom and atrophy.
If she really believed what she’d told Jonah, that quality was the key to the newspaper’s success, she could do this. She could get focused and create great content, and it’d elevate her beyond this job and into an environment more suited to—and appreciative of—her talent.
She imagined a new life, one where she was fit again, where she’d read books on a night and feel intelligent, savoring that almost imperceptible ache of her brain processing something new from a textbook. She turned off her computer for the day and considered how to make this vision a reality.
Routine is easy to break once. She entered the corner shop, looked down the frozen pizza aisle, then continued walking and picked up a bag of salad, then absently walked toward the wine section before turning around. It was nearly the weekend, and she could allow herself a bottle of wine then. She had a pair of running shoes, she remembered. Maybe she could join a book club. Or get the cheapest train to her parents’ house and attempt reconciliation.
Next to the till was a display rack of discounted CDs, and she impulsively dropped one into her basket. When she got home, she’d read a book with the television off and Mozart playing quietly through the stereo.
Our first year with LaxRelief passed quietly. I hadn’t progressed as I’d have liked; I was going to turn 21 in 2008 and my teenaged self had expected to be able to ride away from domestic riders with no effort by that age. While it was true I could grit my teeth and endure most of what people threw at me in races, it wasn’t the same as laying waste to the British scene and then deserting it to do the same in Europe.
Although I’d impressed the entire season, it was Liam who got our best win, in our home race, the East Yorkshire Classic. It was tough, very hilly. What remained at the front after the first half lap wasn’t so much a breakaway as it was the handful of people who hadn’t dropped off the back defeated by gravity and road resistance and physiology. From LaxRelief, there was Clarkey, Liam, and me. Clarkey was the first off the back. He’d been hovering there for what seemed like the whole race, and then the devil finally took him, sucked him back, snapped the elastic.
The group quickly formed a truce to take advantage of the gap, an allegiance of teams ensuring the rest of the riders behind were going to stay behind. It was a large group, though, and with thirteen riders it wasn’t going to sit comfortably for long.
I knew the others were going to try to split the group into a manageable size, because if they had any sense that’s what they’d do. They couldn’t ride me off their wheels, but if four or five people got ahead of me and Liam, nobody left in our half of the break would help us catch them and we’d turn ourselves inside out chasing.
I told Liam we were going to split the group ourselves, and without waiting for even a second to consider my proposal, he came around the outside, then kicked hard. It was beautiful. Power and elegance, his upper body still, no energy wasted with pointless movement. The gap opened. I felt like I could see the steam rising out of everybody else’s ears, could hear the squeaking of their joints as they fought against the bike. Nobody tried to follow.
He stayed away to finish on his own. Fairytale stuff, but there were tactical reasons: nobody had teammates to work, nobody wanted to exhaust themselves dragging me to the finish line in pursuit of Liam, nobody had much morale left after watching their game plan ride off into the distance. He was a bit of a minor celebrity after that, not just on the team but around the cycling scene, and he seemed to grow in confidence for what little remained of the season, which petered out quietly and with very little fanfare whatsoever, and then he disappeared off the radar entirely.
Autumn rolled into Yorkshire, followed by winter. Liam didn’t make it to the Sedgethorpe RC Christmas dinner, where he was to be joint guest of honor with me, and when I called his house a man’s voice answered, not Liam’s, and said he wasn’t at home. Without Liam around, Clarkey and Stephen didn’t have much of an incentive to come across to Yorkshire, and I mostly trained on my own.
I fell into a productive routine. For a long time, cycling had been an escape from the parts of my life I didn’t like, and then it’d reached a destination I’d liked, where I had a close group of friends. I hadn’t accidentally become the best young cyclist in the country, but this was the first time that riding my bike had been entirely about my physical improvement. I’d gradually changed my lifestyle to stay motivated without Liam and Clarkey and Stephen around, and I’d discovered that so long as I remained motivated once I got on the bike, there was nowhere to hide when I rode on my own. One Tuesday morning in mid-January I sat down with my morning coffee at 9:20 AM ahead of my regular starvation ride, and the phone rang. I thought about not answering, then turned off the radio and picked up.
“Can I speak to Dominic please?”
“Yes,” I said, and noted the moment’s silence.
“Are you Dominic?”
“Yes.”
“I’m calling from Cycle Extra. I was wondering if you could tell me how much you were paid this year?”
“Excuse me?”
“The reason I ask is the Royal Society for Cycling funds £13,000 of annual wages for each rider. Your team mates tell me Nick Lyon has paid them much less than that. Did you receive all of it?”
“I have to go,” I said.
“Do you have a comment about the sponsor pulling out?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t know the sponsor had left.
“Will you begin looking for a new team, or do you trust Nick Lyon to find a new sponsor?”
“I really have to go.”
I put the phone down and sat, absently, for a few moments. Then, as with all my other problems so far in life, I ignored it by riding my bicycle. My coffee cup was half full and on the kitchen table when I returned home. I rinsed it, and then showered. Nick Lyon called exactly 21 hours later.
“Hello, ah, Dominic. You might be hearing some strange rumors at the moment. I wanted to call and let everybody know the whole story. And you know, you’re the first person I called,” he said. I waited for his grand soliloquy. “Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“There’s been a big misunderstanding about wages.”
“It sounds like you were underpaying us.”
“Oh no. No, not at all. You were paid the right amount, but this year you’ll be earning £13,000. That’s the new amount. Somebody got confused about the amounts and it turned into silliness.”
“Did LaxRelief pull their sponsorship?”
“You shouldn’t worry about that. The RSC pays for all your wages. The sponsor just picks up the rest of the bill. As it happens I already have a new sponsor lined up, that’s what I wanted to speak to you about. We marketed the squad to one of LaxRelief’s competitors in the marketplace, so now you’re officially a Stool Aid rider. Congratulations. The situation isn’t much different, nothing’s changing, but I’ll need to drop by to pick up your bike for a respray.”
“Ok,” I said, unsure if I’d ever see it again.
“Thank you for being so understanding. Liam needed much more reassurance.”
“You said I was the first person you called.”
“That doesn’t matter,” he said. He inhaled down the phone. “I have some more good news: I’ve arranged for the entire team to have a training camp on January 23. Can you make it?”
“You mean Wednesday? Where is it?”
“Provence. Beautiful hotel. Your flight’s from John Lennon airport at 6:30 AM. I have to call your friends now, but I’m glad to have you on board.”
He’d given me a surprise, and if I was lucky I could catch an early warm day in Provence. I barely had enough time to pack. A couple of days later, I made my way to Liverpool airport, where I discovered at check-in that I’d have to pay my own baggage fee.
Hold it in your hands
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