Think Big, a novel

            Suddenly the locks came alive, spinning Quinn's keys in his fingers. His roommate Joel rescued him, turning the levers from inside. The door jerked open.

"What bank did you rob?" he asked. 

            "Why?" Quinn had hoped the apartment would be empty.

Joel pointed to the television.

            CNN's Wolf Blitzer was intoning at an angle: "...biggest modern scandal in journalism at the venerable Think magazine, the nation's largest newsmagazine. We'll be back with that story in a minute."

"And listen to this." Joel skittered through the living room to the answering machine.

"You have 34 messages," said the leaky digitized voice. "Memory Full."

"I stopped paying attention after the Pope called. Seriously, what did you do?"

            Quinn shrugged. He moved the pasta pot on the sofa that held his white Oxford shirt that had been soaking in detergent. He leaned into the cushions and sat down.

            "Are you in trouble?"

            "Well, I'm unemployed. After that, I don't know." Tired of waiting, Quinn hit the play button.

"Quinn Connor this is Larry King of Larry King Live. Tonight we have a whole hour waiting for you. I want you to come on. We'll have a car pick you up. There are a million viewers in the United States and nearly forty million worldwide who watch the show and they want to hear what Quinn Connor has to tell Larry King. "

            Beep.

            "Quinn, hey it's Katie Couric. Everybody's calling you I know, and I bet all you want to do is sleep, which means getting up early is a bummer, but I really want you on the Today show tomorrow. That's tomorrow on Today. It'll be really fun and easy. We're not going to ask you to do math or anything. Plus, we've got Nellie on the show so you can hang around and watch him if you'd like."

Quinn pressed the fast forward button. The pleading came in bursts.

            ". . . Nina Collins at the Securities and Exchange Commission. I need to talk to you immediately."

            "Quinn, this is Diane Sawyer..."

            "Quinn, this is Barbara Walters, I know you may have heard from others, even others at my network. But I am airing a special in a week and would like to swap the Sharon Stone segment for one featuring you. I will call back in an hour."

            The phone rang.

            "Don't pick it up," Quinn said, tickling the phone line out from the jack. 

            "What are you going to do?"

            "Sleep."

Chapter One

            April, 1991

Quinn liked the sound of his loafers clicking across the marble floor. It reminded him of his father. As a kid, it was the sound he heard before he woke him up to go to school.

As he marched across the lobby of Think magazine's headquarters that Monday everything seemed like bubbly possibility and rapid advancement. Spring was approaching. He'd beaten the morning crush on the subway and had a warm stomach full of a slippery bacon, egg and cheese bagel.

His new job was going to be exciting. He had eight months to prove that he could be a newsmagazine correspondent and he was pretty sure he could do it.

Quinn was not, by nature, giddy or even a wide-eyed optimist. But this was heady stuff (a term he had never really understood until now.) He was twenty-four and working for the world's most prestigious newsmagazine. Journalists didn't get this kind of gig until more than halfway through their careers.

Though it was his first official day, he'd nodded to the elevator operator like he'd been there for years.

It was the kind of scene that might kick off a musical.

            On the ride up to the 23^rd floor Quinn straightened his tie in the elevator mirror and buttoned his blue blazer. In his inside pocket he could feel the Mont Blanc pen his former colleagues had given him before he left for his new job. It was the size of a baguette.

The doors opened quietly into darkness.

Good, he thought.

The magazine went to print on Saturday, so almost no one was in the office five days before deadline. He had come in early to get his bearings before his first week's duties began.

Quinn was not overly fastidious, but he liked to have his pencils lined up before the test began.   A year out of college, perhaps he should have shaken his schoolwork approach to life where each stage was punctuated by an exam or paper and the grade you receive gives you a sense of yourself and your position in the eternal contest with everyone else. But he liked to approach his days this way. The structure fit the kind of fellow he was. He needed definite horizons and foreseeable moments of drama on which to fix his anxieties. All of these imagined things he could be overcome through hard work. And working hard was something he considered himself good at.

His eight-month trial period was just the kind of very big test he liked. It confirmed Quinn's belief that at the highest levels-- like at Think magazine-- there was an orderly approach and thematic symmetry to affairs. By the diligent application of his wits he would be in fine shape.

                                    -*-

Would they assign him a story his first week? Quinn checked to see whether he was exhilarated or frightened at the prospect. He couldn't tell. Probably both. But he wouldn't get an assignment the first week. A rookie like him? No. He was secretly relieved at the idea. No, he wasn't relieved; he was ready to hit the ground running. Really, he was.

            The elevator doors closed behind him, reminding him to move. He turned left, then right, then back again. Finally, he guessed, and headed deliberately down the hall.

                                                -*-

            Something in his office was glowing. At least Quinn thought it was his office anyway. He'd only been there once, the day before, and after three days of living in Manhattan, he was convinced that nothing ever looked the same way twice.

The nameplate was blank. That was a familiar sign. But as he made his way to the end of the dim hallway, he slowed. His shoulders angled. He could change course in an instant and head off confidently in the other direction if someone spotted him in the wrong place.

He stopped before the last door on the left. Yes, this was his office. He straightened up and leaned into the handle. Immediately, he was in his grandmother's attic. The dry air smelled like it had been stockpiled during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

He dropped his book bag on the sofa and took in a new plume of stale air. That was the culprit. The sofa's tweed had bottled up over the weekend. He flicked on the light. The walls had just been painted white. The fluorescent bulbs were fresh too. There was no window. The room was ready for surgery.

 The simple digs couldn't tamp his mood though. Here he was unlocking an office meant for him.

The computer screen was glowing. A little neon white email flag blinked on and off under the static guard.

No problem, probably just a 'nice to have you here' kind of sunny greeting or some formality from Human Resources. Quinn pressed the glossy gray "MAIL" button on the keyboard and a plate full of text appeared behind the plastic hood that protected the screen from static.

His sense of wonder started to ebb. He wanted to know what that much of an email had to say.

The static guard was in his way.  In a quick try, he pinched the oily hood and jerked it like a Band-Aid. His fingertips slipped and his arm flew straight up. (Ole!) He smiled an unconvincing smile. He gave another pinch-and-yank and let go. The cover launched and fell on the carpet with a soft whoosh.

            Quinn blinked his contacts into place.

_______________________________________

To: Quinn Connor

From: Forney Smart

Re: Booming Times

Quinn: Below I have appended a query for a big takeout on Wall Street's coming wireless high tech boom. You are handling the reporting on the stock market. As you will see, files for the story are due by Thursday morning. What an exciting story. Welcome to Think.

F. S.

____________________________________________

            Five minutes into the building, and Quinn was under starter's orders. The coffee he had bought after leaving the subway turned on him.

            The e-mail's author, Forney Smart, was Think magazine's Deputy Managing Editor. The number two in charge, his was the only name on the magazine masthead Quinn knew. Quinn had worked for Forney just six months before, as the Washington assistant to his now defunct cable talk show. Forney Smart was responsible for Quinn's big jump from television into magazine journalism and also most of Quinn's adult experiences with indigestion.

            Forney was one problem. There was a second one. Quinn knew nothing about Wall Street. Well, he knew there was a street by that name, or he thought there was anyway. There was a stock market there. Was there just one stock market? Was it, or were they, on that actual street?

Quinn sat down on the couch which sighed more vintage dust.

At Michigan, he had gotten a C- in macroeconomics. It was the only "business class" he had ever taken. In the margin notes of his exam, his professor suggested he take up painting.

He read the email again. He could handle this. Sweat started to push through the roots of his hair.

At the moment of Quinn's increasing crisis, Sally Reutenbaker, an associate editor of fixed opinions, was wondering who would bother to come in that early in the week. Someone had probably just been careless and left the lights on. She stopped at Quinn's office door to see.

Quinn did not hear her. He was contemplating his third challenge: in his professional life, Quinn Connor had never reported a story.

            Go. He pulled back the throttle and raced into a state of full terror. He now had duties and timelines, and people were watching and man, were the walls of his office white. It was like they were yelling at each other. The coffee was now like a hot bolt. He wriggled out of his navy blue blazer and turned, stepping towards the door. Underfoot, the static guard squished, putting him off balance. His knee crashed into the corner of his desk as he looked up at Reutenbaker.

            "Mother Fuuuuoooo," he howled.

Quinn tried to stop the expletive but it was the only thing giving him relief.

Reutenbaker hopped as Quinn fell to the floor and then beat it as if escaping the spray of an advancing sprinkler. Her corduroys could be heard whistling down the hallway.