The Sourdough Wars

voice. “Rebecca, are you okay?”
    The giggle fit blew over, and I was suddenly very mad. “Okay? Okay? No, I am not okay, you newshawk. I have been pistol-whipped, falsely arrested and thrown in a cell, where I have probably contracted a rare venereal disease, and all because you had to phone in your stupid story.”
    “But, Rebecca, what happened?”
    That nearly sent me around the bend. “And you’re
still
thinking about it. You’re not worried about me; all you can think about is what’s going in the final edition. Get it from your ‘sources,’ newshawk!”
    “Rebecca, believe me—”
    Dad stepped forward and took Rob’s arm, his face a sky full of thunderclouds. “Rob, I think you’d just better stay out of this.”
    He put an arm around me, putting his body between me and Rob and Pete, protecting me from the dread press plague. Of course, the very press he now sought to save me from was one both of us manipulated shamelessly and, in Dad’s case, skillfully, every chance we got. But at the moment it seemed our bitterest enemy.
    Pete had fallen back, out of the line of fire, but Rob just couldn’t let well enough alone. “But, Mr. Schwartz, it’s my job. If there was anything I could do, you know I—”
    Mom turned on him again. Her black brows came together under her perfect silver hairdo. “There’s something you can do.”
    Rob moved back a step or three. “What?”
    She pointed at Pete. “Tell him to hand over the film.”
    “But I—”
    Pete spoke for the first time, softly. “You know he can’t do that.”
    Even I in my weakened condition knew he couldn’t do that. Mom had no right to ask.
    Rob stared for a moment at the marble wall behind us. “I’m sorry,” he said, and walked away. Pete followed.
    “So, jailbird,” said Alan. “Need a ride home?”
    And Rob was the one my parents didn’t like! Just because he was only half Jewish. True, Rob was a newshawk, just like Mom said, but Kruzick needed drawing and quartering.
    “You’re fired,” I said.
    He just smiled. “See you tomorrow.”
    And he and Mickey left.
    That meant I had to go home with Mom and Dad, which was the last thing I wanted. Mom started in before we were even out the door. “Rebecca, it’s a wonder your father’s heart doesn’t give out, the trouble you give him. If you don’t get rid of that Rob after this and find a nice doctor or something… Listen, remember Marty Becker? He grew up to be a banker and nobody’s landed him yet.”
    At the moment I was so mad at Rob I was almost willing to take a chance on Marty, but I was also unreasonably mad at Mom and Dad for being in the middle—however unwittingly—of a fight between my boyfriend and me. My head felt as if it would crack open.
    “He wouldn’t like me,” I said. “I’m disfigured.”
    “Beck, he really didn’t have to bring that photographer,” said Dad.
    I didn’t think I could take much more, and I didn’t like the direction in which Dad was driving.
    “This isn’t the way to Green Street.”
    “You’re coming home where you belong,” said Mom.
    It took all my strength to speak, and when I did, I sounded as if I were about two.
    “Mom, please. I just need to be alone.”
    She didn’t answer, and neither did Dad, but I think they both got the message. Dad turned right and took me to Green Street. Of course, they had to go in with me and make sure no goblins lurked in my overpriced apartment, but then they left me blessedly alone.
    “Be sure,” said Mom as they went out the door, “to have those clothes fumigated before you wear them again.”
    I’d been thinking along these lines myself, but hearing Mom say it made me realize that I’d reverted to being the Marin County Jewish Princess I like to think I haven’t been since high school. I was suddenly ashamed of imagining lice in what was probably a perfectly clean jail. There was nothing wrong with my clothes a little dry cleaning wouldn’t fix.
    I hung them up and stood in the shower for about half an hour, washing my hair and rewashing it, letting jail and all its real or imagined cooties run down the drain. Then I slipped into a clean white nightie.
    I was feeding Durango and company when Chris called. I babbled out my tale, going heavy on the humiliation of having my folks in the middle of my fight with Rob, which was the part that now bothered me the most, and then asked her where she’d been when I needed her.
    “Nowhere special.” She sounded slightly