The Death of a Journalist
(Page 3 of 11)
September/October 1996
Lynda Schuster, Granta (www.granta.com)
The poor stringer stolidly made his way through every course while we ignored him. I didn't want the meal to end. Hours later, when we finally had to leave the restaurant, the whole world seemed transformed. The mundane had become magical: the moon-faced vendor trying to sell one last lottery ticket; the dog trotting purposefully down the echoing avenue; even the policeman, leaning against his squad car under a street light, squinting at a comic book.
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The next night we met for supper again, this time in a Chinese restaurant. I spent the entire day waiting for those few hours, barely able to concentrate on my work. I was dimly aware of the half-dozen or so other people at our table, journalist friends of the stringer. I was dimly aware of the food that kept passing by on a large revolving tray. But all this was a backdrop to Dial. He and I talked until nearly dawn, moving from the restaurant to a bar to the hotel lobby. Later that morning, Dial departed for El Salvador, leaving a note in my message box: 'Dial Torgerson fell in love at 11:37 p.m., Thursday Oct. 1, in San Jose, Costa Rica.'
So our love affair began: a frenetic, breathless sort of relationship, squeezed in among the wars and coups we had to cover for our respective newspapers. That we would rendezvous in such dangerous places -- El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras -- only heightened our intoxication. A few of Dial's colleagues on the Los Angeles Times started muttering to his editors about a conflict of interest, something that Dial dismissed as nonsense: Our papers played to very different audiences; we wrote very different stories. My bosses certainly didn't seem worried, for despite my self-doubts I blossomed in Central America. I have never written so much nor, I believe, so well; often I would return from the day's interviews to find a 'herogram' -- a laudatory telex from the Journal's managing editor -- in my message box.
I was too young then to appreciate the miraculousness of what was happening. I knew only that I had never been in love before; everything about it that had once seemed so trite and silly and that I had derided in others now appeared fresh, meaningful, ineffably sweet. Of course, acquaintances alluded, with exaggerated winks and nudges, to the difference in our ages; even Dial's teenage daughter exclaimed, 'But Lynda, how can you kiss him? He has wrinkles!' They didn't understand that I could never have fallen in love with a younger man. If a man were ever going to grow up -- never a certainty -- I figured it would take him at least until middle age to discover his humanity. For his part, Dial attracted much ribbing of the ha-ha-you-old-billy-goat sort. A reporter in my bureau, when he learned of our affair, maintained that a man of Dial's age -- the same as his own -- could be in such a relationship only for reasons of sex and ego. But to me, Dial spoke only of love.
Several months after we met, he wrote from San Salvador:
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