Tuesday nights at Evergreen Tap were not often busy. This Tuesday was no different a couple hours ahead of last call. The bartender knew they wouldn’t be closing early this night well ahead of seeing Jeremy darken the door. “Just News” Jeremy was at the end of a long professional night. The bartender had the bottle pulled as he watched him taking his usual stool. Tonight that seat sat a space down from a stranger.
“Wow. Tonight, huh? Just the usual or make it a triple, Jay?” the bartender raised a skeptical brow. They went way back. Both neighborhood kids. One had become city-level famous as the investigative journalist at the local network affiliate. The other poured the whiskey.
“Just the usual tonight. Kinda shell shocked. Not even sure I am staying.”
“Uh huh. Sure. Here you go, Jay. You deserve it tonight, old friend.”
They both knew “Just News” Jay would stay until it was time to close. There was no bigger “one of those nights” than this one. What Jay had to cover and stay late to report had stunned the city. The same revelations shocked the nation as news went out over television news affiliates in all the cities. Everything had changed. Everybody was shell shocked. Everybody off balance.
“How about that beer?” said the stranger cooly.
The investigative journalist was confused as the stranger was looking him dead in the eye.
As Jeremy was about to question, the pale, thin patron cocked a long neck back towards the bartender as if to remind he had ordered a beer. Jeremy didn’t have time to process the attention he was receiving from this newcomer. Automatically, he raised the shields one with such levels of celebrity sometimes has to employ in order to maintain sanity. No more sanity-challenging night than this one for fuck’s sake. Not for this local hero investigative journalist. Director of Investigative Reporting. Why did that sound different in his head tonight than any other time he had reminded himself of the promotion?
“Hell of a thing, huh?” No question this time that pale skinny guy was talking to him.
“You could certainly say that, partner. Long work night for me.” Jeremy looked down at the glass hoping to stay alone with his thoughts and the brown relief of his whiskey. Feeling strange eyes on him was familiar to Just News Jeremy. After all, he is a TV star of sorts.
“I know. I watched.” The stranger looked away as if deciding not to start a conversation.
So this unfamiliar interloper in his home drinking hole DID know he was a TV reporter. Usually that provoked a little more enthusiasm upon recognition. Christ, Jay thought, not everybody has to buy me a beer but it’s nice to get a little encouragement. Whatever. The magnitude of tonight had barely yet begun to come into focus. How did his entire beloved profession miss this story? Even more, not only had they missed it but there had been so much static going the other direction it was so safely assumed to not be possible. Jeremy knew how HE had missed it. The bosses said it was settled. Facts. Talking points. He felt the drink need him again so he obliged it with a gulp.
“How does it feel? To be a celebrity? It sounds fucking terrible, Just News.”
The stranger again. He had closed the space between them and was now on the next stool.
The tone with which he spit the nickname at Jeremy was unnerving. The suddenly only inches distance between them even more so. Jeremy was a little dizzy with the overload of the evening. A close talking meth-head groupie was not on his patience agenda for tonight’s drinking.
Time for a bit of aggression, Jeremy decided, taking note of the emptiness of the place.
“Can I help you?” Firmly now, Jeremy steel- eyed the threat.
“How about that beer?” the clearly alert and now actively enthused interloper grinned widely.
“What beer, friend?” Jeremy tried to maintain some steel but his bluff had gone nowhere with this challenging presence. Acting in the studio and acting in real life were not always the same. Jeremy realized he had hit one of those times where he had under-evaluated that exact dynamic.
“I get it. You don’t recognize me. Why would you?”
This fucking death stare from this guy!
Jeremy was angry but he also felt outmatched somehow. Being a TV personality makes you good at a few things. Jeremy hadn’t been in a fight since grade school. He lost that one. Time to make friends.
“Should I recognize you? Are you from the neighborhood here, my dude?”
The attempt at rapport was obvious and sad. Both men immediately sensed it.
The stranger pressed.
“So they were right, you know? You do know that now, right?”
Was that derision dripping off of this guy’s questions?
Jeremy detected taunting. He wanted to do something but didn’t know what.
“Who was right?”
Fuck, thought Jeremy, as he heard a crack in his own voice.
“The conspiracy theorists, of course!”
The stranger leaned into Jeremy as if scanning for some recognition of something. The stranger seemed quite confident what he was looking for would soon arrive. With the world-changing news that dropped seemingly from the sky that night, Jeremy hadn’t even gotten this far down the consequence trail. It was right there, though. Jeremy’s heart sank as the interloper grinned again.
“You do see it, Just News!”
The stranger clapped a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder hard enough to imprint a sense of control of things. Both men knew it. Only one was laughing. At a time like this! Just the idea of laughter tonight was chilling. There was a confident satisfaction in this laughter that immediately caused Jeremy to surrender his. Fear was starting to become a real motivator in Jeremy’s immediate world. Fake it until you make it time, the TV personality thought, still wearing makeup from that evening’s emergency breaking news broadcast.
“How about that beer?”
The stranger removed his hand and glared with amusement.
“I don’t know what beer you are talking about!” Jeremy was afraid but also impatient.
“I know. First, let’s talk about why we are here. Sitting together. Tonight.”
Jeremy knew he didn’t need to prod for explanation.
“You, Just News, are here because this is where you always come. When the news runs late. When you have one of those big stories that keeps you at the studio playing here is what you need to know on screens across the metro area.” His challenger now mocking him with a cartoonish newscaster voice.
“You know, Just News. The nights that Mama Just News and the two little Just Newses are asleep and you can get your whiskey on. See? Knowing things and finding information is what we do. Your individual security posture is as weak in your real life as it is online.” A derisive grin.
The smile was so unnerving. How had such a monumental occurrence tonight on a vast global level come down to this for him right now? This man mentioned his wife and kids! The realization gripped Jeremy’s heart. They were his world. His internal reaction to this must have been obvious.
“I didn’t say their names, Jeremy. I told you why you are here. Are you not interested in why I am here?”
Jeremy answered with only the fear in his eyes.
“YOU invited me, Jeremy. YOU said you were going to buy ME a beer.”
Jeremy had never seen this man before in his life yet he now realized he knew him.
“C’mon, news man. You remember. If my ‘crazy bullshit’ ever proves true? You’ll buy beer?”
Jeremy had typed that same exact offer many times. It was like a team-building exercise at the station. Where they took to social media to shame the “conspira-tards,” as the producers liked to call them. Good for ratings they told him. Early on in their efforts Jeremy had taken note of the enthusiasm with which some of the newsroom took to the task. He chalked it up to camaraderie under fire. They were after all under attack, weren’t they? Fighting back made sense, no? He developed a signature move in dismissing the anonymous accounts constantly undermining the messages the journalists and the station wanted to convey. Undermining them with their goddamned conspiracy tripe. Instead of constantly feeding these trolls, Jeremy deployed the line he was now uncomfortable being famous for. “I am Just News Jeremy, so if any of your crazy bullshit proves out someday, I will be the first to buy you a beer!” Then he blocked the accounts to maintain control of his social media realm. His co-workers in the news department loved it! His mind now raced while at the same time settling on exactly what he had begun to realize was happening. His mind now raced with the unpleasantness of newly-realized implications both immediate and distant. Realizing his initial instinct to action was a habitual reaction. He impulsively had looked for a mute or block. These were not options here. Not face to face. Fear was quickly becoming the only motivator in Jeremy’s current universe.
“I see that you now understand. You, Mr. Just News Jeremy, Mr. Big Daddy award-winning Investigative journalist on the tee vee! You sir, owe me. I have come to collect. So… how about that fucking beer?”
“Who are you?” Jeremy exhaled meekly in resignation.
“I am exactly fucking nobody and that is all you need to know. One of many who risked their reputation and standing to bring truth to light. While you and your friends used our anonymity against us to demonize and demean us in the eyes of our friends. Our colleagues. Our families. We are going to have that beer you offered so many of us over the past few years. I represent that anonymous community that you mocked. The mocking days are over and if you haven’t already started to see it yet tonight you most certainly will before we are done. Don’t cause any kind of scene, Jeremy.”
Jeremy felt as if being inspected closely by a predator. The implied threat felt sincere and he felt small. He signaled to the friendly bartender at the other end of the mostly empty bar.
“Beer, please.” Just News Jeremy croaked.
The bottle hadn’t hit the napkin before the realizations started to hit him. The news tonight was bigger than a mere global shocker. The news tonight was biblical. Everything WAS different. How the fuck did this happen in a blink of an eye?
Jeremy looked at his drinking partner with understanding.
“Cheers!” said the anonymous interloper with a grin Jeremy assessed as puzzlingly sincere.
Jeremy shakingly sipped his whiskey.
“Are you starting yet to see the chain of events? The dominos?”
Jeremy did and yet did not understand. He was wary to speak.
“Let me explain what you did. How you hurt our families. You know family, Jeremy.”
Fear again stabbed Jeremy in his fatherhood as this man said his children’s names.
“Yes, Jeremy. We know your kid’s names. Their bus routes if we want. All of it.”
The anons. They were real and they were not online. Not here. Not tonight.
A third of the beer gone and another glare straight into Jeremy’s fearful eyes.
“You cost me my family, Jeremy. You and your friends. You cost a lot of us. We people from “the dark recesses of the internet.” You know. The truthers that you demonized. The ones you shamed and accused for not respecting victims’ families and worse. Minimizing the chance for exposure of our legitimate questions. Telling our families that we were lunatic and you were the light protecting our democracy. That is what you did, Just News. You owe me a lot more than this promised beer, asshole.”
The anon had no emotion left. The war had drained empathy.
Jeremy sensed this man cared not for his fear. That terrified Jeremy.
“I came here to make sure you understand, Jeremy. You hurt so many of us. I was assigned you for this moment. You labelled us. You smeared us. You publicly mocked and chided us. You called us domestic terrorists out of one side of your mouth while taunting us out of the other. There is no denying the truth after tonight. You see where the logic takes you. You know what you missed. You know what you provided cover for. Tell me Used To Be News Jeremy. Why did you do that? To me? To all of us?”
“I don’t understand” stammering and spitting.
“You better understand in this next minute or so, Jeremy, because my fury for you is pretty fucking close to endless right now. I know your dumb ass didn’t know. The people I speak for could access your everything with a keystroke. Why did you attack our character and credibility? Why did you stand in the way of truth for so long? Even you have to acknowledge its arrival. Give it to me, Jeremy. I need to hear it. Why did an investigative reporter dismiss these questions and those with the courage to ask them without investigation? Tell me that, Jeremy. Tell me now.” The beer bottle now half empty.
“The bosses sometimes! The crazy shit you all said sometimes! We didn’t know. You were understood to be fringe and dangerous. It was how we were expected to handle such topics!” Jeremy’s head fell.
“There it is. Thank you, Jeremy.”
There was satisfaction now in the anger.
“You were following orders.”
Jeremy looked at the dead eyes of the anonymous man and understood.
There was no ignoring the connections that were already falling into place. The entire corrupt system was about to come down and he had been a complicit actor within that system. Against many. Memories of dismissals. The old certainties shedding now against his will. The pain of having cognitive dissonance removed from his list of options. He had been an enemy of this angry man sitting here finishing off a bottle of beer. While the anonymous figure locked his gaze on him in an assessing way, Jeremy exhaled fully with… “I am sorry.”
“You should be, Used to Be News Jeremy. That domestic extremist hit piece you did a few months back really reached my wife. You won an award for that deceit. Did I mention she took my kids with her when she blew out?”
The sorrow and the fury both terrified Jeremy as he realized this man knew HIS children’s names and where they were sleeping a few blocks away.
“I am so sorry. Please forgive me.”
“Well, Jay Bird, the people you maligned aren’t much for forgiving or forgetting. God and you are going to have to work that all out. For the moment, you need to relax. You called this meeting. Don’t be pissed off that one of us showed up for it. We aren’t going to hurt you or your family. We never would have. You, like the rest of the world, are connecting all the dots tonight. What you reported to the world tonight was a keystone. You should understand what that means but you did not listen to us. You will almost immediately understand how this brings the whole diseased temple down. I did not come here to take anything from you in revenge, Jeremy. We both know right now there isn’t much left to take anyways. I came here tonight for the look in your eye as you absorb the pain of realization. That and the beer.”
The fear drained out of Jeremy as he began to believe the man might leave. His bladder did let go a bit before Jeremy caught it. A bit too late to stay entirely dry but at least he didn’t piss himself fully. The anonymous antagonist stood quickly and looked at him with pity. Jeremy knew he sensed his fear whether he actually smelled the piss or not.
“We only ever wanted you to be what you claimed to be. You journalists. You claimed you were looking out for We the People against corruption. You don’t have to worry about vengeance from my people. We were NEVER what you claimed we were. The mobs however are forming as the rest of your world realizes your deceptions and ineptitudes. You will have to present that “following orders” defense to them. The mob of people that you DID deceive. It is their fury you will have to concern yourself with. You destroyed their relationships too. Good luck with that. We did try to tell you.”
“What will I do?”
Jeremy was leveled with the vertigo of realizing he really didn’t know anything for sure anymore.
“That’s up to you, Jeremy. You should however work on it from home. We are the news now.”
With that the Anon disappeared into the night.
@mikemullens