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of the coffee that he’s
resting right on my desk, no coaster. He looks disheveled, his hair mussed, his
face sporting old growth from the night before, like he hasn’t found time to
shave – or change his clothes, I realize, as he’s wearing the same thing as
yesterday. A moment of pity surfaces but I drown it without a thought –
whatever he’s putting himself through, it’s in the ultimate goal of pursuit of
my job, and I need to be equally ruthless to keep it.
    “What are—“ I start, furious.
    He spins to face me, creaking. “I owed you an article from
yesterday,” he says.
    I recognize this sensation from two days ago, when Max
dumped me – my mind is numb, refusing to allow this information entry lest it
upset the status quo of my life too much. I power through it. He’s not going to
let me live in ignorance. I need to accept this and move on.
    “Go on,” I say.
    “You didn’t just think I was going to take that column you
wrote without paying you back, did you?” he asks.
    I don’t say anything, holding my breath. This has to be some
sort of scheme to get at me. Has to.
    “At the Globe we had a policy where if you used someone
else’s notes for anything, you paid them back in kind with whatever they were
working on. I assumed that was how you did things here.”
    “So you—“
    It’s weird being interrupted by a person who’s little more
than a half-dead victim of sleep deprivation so often, but he still manages in
a slow, methodical way, talking under me more than over. “I fleshed out your
notes on the article on Korean music. It’s really interesting stuff, actually –
you were on to a lot of great leads that I don’t think I would have found on my
own. It’s still not quite the state of the column you gave me, but if you give
me an hour or two to finish –“
    I walk around my desk to stare at my computer screen,
finally. He’s taken my notes and enhanced them – I can see the untouched
originals in bold red, each now followed by dozens of tiny black lines.
Jeremy’s notes. Phone numbers, web addresses, article references, and contact
information. Each one accompanied by an extensive description, detailing what
it is and how it supports my article. A couple even have long purple paragraphs
in tow – interview transcripts, from the looks of it.
    The quality is amazing. I’d found hints and rumors of sexual
scandals, but hadn’t been able to get anything concrete due to Korean law
dictating that defendants names be hidden from the press. Jeremy’s pinned down
a major CEO on trial for 40 odd counts of sexual abuse within the last month.
I’d hinted at salary problems and bad hours, he’s gotten exact figures for both
hours worked and pay rates and exchange rates to compare various groups to
executive assistants here in the states. I think I mentioned exhaustion once in
my notes, and he’s got accounts of using IV drops in between performances to
counteract an otherwise impossible schedule. And then there’s the dozen odd
pages of interviews.
    “You’ve been interviewing people in the middle of the
night?” I ask.
    “It’s almost midnight in Korea,” Jeremy says. “I got a few
calls in to some contacts a little while ago. It’s not amazing stuff but it
backs up what you were already suspecting.”
    I need to sit down. I clear a spot on my desk. “Thank you,”
I say, finally. I can’t believe some of the things he’s managed to find – all
of the things that my research had hinted at he’s found a concrete example of
in a cite-able format.
    “You really just expected me to take that article and run?”
Jeremy asks.
    “I thought you were an asshole,” I say.
    He shakes his head. “Probably still am,” he says. “Phil says
I’m going to be working with you for a while, though, so I need to stay on your
good side.”
    I’ve been trying to raise my guard up for this moment, for
when he’ll inevitably try to convince me that we’re on the same side. When