rel="nofollow" href="#uae1e4c69-9473-5a78-9a0a-91db1f0417c2"> Chapter 16
“Yo! Nona!”
Nona Gregory heard her name being called but didn’t bother looking up from her computer screen. She was typing, fast and furious, determined to get the latest draft of her article on her boss’s desk by the end of the day. Given that she only had twelve minutes, she couldn’t spare any time to deal with her coworker’s foolishness.
“I know you heard me, girl.” Ever persistent, Casey Dunning sidled into Nona’s office, a smirk on her face. “Did you get that thing I sent you?”
“Nah. Haven’t checked my email today.” Nona kept her eyes on her screen and her hands flying across the keys as she answered.
“Girl. You’re such a workaholic. You’re not even going to look at me?”
“Not until I hit Send on this article.”
Casey sighed. “Fine. I’ll wait.”
For the next few moments, the only sound in the office was of Nona’s seventy-five-words-per-minute typing. True to her word, she didn’t acknowledge Casey until she’d completed the last line, run a quick spell-check and sent the article on its way. Raising her eyes to her perturbed-looking coworker, she asked, “What’s so important?”
“It’s not important, per se. But it is funny, and I think most of us in this office would agree that you’re entirely too serious.”
Nona rolled her eyes. “Forgive me, but I was under the impression that this was a newspaper office and not the writers’ pen at a sketch comedy show.”
Casey shook her head. “Ugh. Just check your email when you get a chance, okay? You’re such a buzzkill.”
Nona watched Casey as she strode out of the office, leaving the door open. “And yet you continue to try to change me.”
After Casey left, Nona settled back in her chair. It was the end of another long day spent covering the Queen City’s arts and entertainment scene for the Charlotte Observer. As department head, Nona enjoyed a good amount of editorial freedom in choosing the stories she chased—most of the time. But with that freedom came some heavy responsibilities. She was charged with leadership of the three other reporters who also covered the area, and with being the final set of eyes to see their articles before they were passed up to her boss, the editorial director.
The sound of someone else entering her office pulled Nona back to reality. She straightened in her chair as her boss, Wendell Huffman, strode into the space. “I just saw your article on the art gallery opening hit my inbox. Good work, ace.”
She offered a small smile. “Thanks, Huff.” It was what everyone in the office called him. At least everyone who’d been working at the paper more than a year.
At fifty-two, Wendell had been in the reporting game for more than two decades. His face was clean shaven and retained a youthful appearance despite the gray peppering the edges of his close-trimmed black hair. He had assessing brown eyes that seemed to see through a person and a laid-back personality that kept him calm even around the tightest of deadlines. Beneath his cool exterior, though, was a true passion for getting down to the real core of a story. Today he wore his regular uniform of a vertical-striped white shirt and a pair of crisply ironed khaki pants.
“Even though I haven’t read it yet, I know it’ll be gold.” Wendell made himself comfortable in the chair on the other side of Nona’s desk. “And that’s why I have an assignment for you.”
Nona’s brow lifted in surprise and curiosity. “Really?” She chose most of her assignments, but when Wendell chose on her behalf, it usually meant the story would be a particularly compelling one.
“Yes. Are you familiar with the Grand Pearl Theater?”
She nodded. “The old building near J. C. Smith, on Beatties Ford Road, in Biddleville, right? It used to be the only black theater in town during segregation.”
“Right. Well, the city has just shelled out millions to have it remodeled and restored, and get this...the architect is Asian, and a small business outfit at that. It’s the biggest contract ever awarded by the city to a sole proprietor.”
Nona’s eyes widened. “Wow. A multimillion-dollar contract on a project like this, and it’s not going to some global architecture conglomerate? This is news.”
Wendell nodded. “You’re telling me. The higher-ups at corporate are already buzzing about this, and the editor in chief called me about an hour ago. We want you to cover this.”
Nona clapped her hands together as the excitement buzzed through her veins. “Sounds great! What’s our angle? Are we looking at the rich history of the Grand Pearl and the surrounding neighborhood? Or are we attacking gentrification and lauding the city for its efforts at restoring an important landmark?”
“Actually, we’re doing both of those angles. And a third angle.”
“What’s my third angle, Huff?”
“Learning everything there is to know about the architect, Ken Yamada. We want to know who he is, where he comes from, what he does in his spare time. But most of all, we want to know what drives him, what inspires his art. I’m told his winning design for the restoration is quite stunning.”
Cupping her chin in her hand, Nona thought about what Wendell was saying. It had been years since she’d done a personal profile, but it hadn’t been so long that she’d forgotten how odd artists could be. “So I’m getting all up in this guy’s business?”
“Basically.” Wendell clasped his hands in front of him, lacing his fingers. “There has to be something remarkable about him. He beat out some pretty stiff competition to get this contract.”
“I agree.” She knew that such an unprecedented contract could only have gone to someone like Mr. Yamada because he had something that amazed and impressed the city officials overseeing the project. “I’m on it.”
Huff let a broad grin spread over his face. “Excellent. You’ll start bright and early Monday morning on this. There’s a big unveiling of the new theater design in three weeks, and we want to debut the feature a few days before that.”
Her jaw dropped. “A feature? As in front page of the entertainment section?”
He rose from his chair. “No. As in, front page of the paper, above the fold.”
Holy crap. “I’m writing a headline feature?”
By now he was standing in her office doorway. “Yes, if you can handle it. Can you get me a great story in two and a half weeks?”
Parts of her were a tiny bit uncertain, but this was the opportunity of a lifetime. It could make or break her journalism career, and