She walked out our front door and waved in the general direction of the tent city, where a few bleary protest campers, who were trying to heat up coffee with battery-operated portable burners, waved back. Something they mentioned to us later, thinking it might cheer us up. At Bernie’s, our favorite diner — a bit of old Westie, a rumored former haunt of the famed Zanitti gang where slices of cake stand a full foot high — she ordered a four-egg Greek omelet and some blintzes from the dumpy high schooler who waited on her, and when these arrived she mowed them down methodically. Imagine the high schooler eyeing her with envy. Not many women can eat like that and stay Copy’s size, which was miniature. When she finished the last bite of grease and ricotta, she asked her waitress, who probably wanted to take a swing at her, for an entire lemon meringue pie to go, for our office fridge. The girl complied. She, too, told us about that morning later, the next time we ventured in, remarking upon Copy’s appetite and zest.

We are not, as evidenced by our late-night behaviors, a traditional news outlet, but rather what folks call alternative media. We tell ourselves that people rely on us for a certain amount of justice. Or, when justice doesn’t pay the bills, we tell ourselves that people rely on us for pithy reviews of local goregrind basement shows. We are all of us young, except for Chief, who is a grizzled Vietnam vet. What we mean to say is that most of us woke up much later and more hung over than Copy did, that day and all others.

Still, by the time she walked back we’d all managed to roll out of our beds (or wherever we’d fallen asleep), gather at our headquarters, and start to phone her. We had a little content: Chief was working up an interview with a woman whose Halloween burlesque show had been cancelled when management at the venue figured out she planned to set her pubic hair on fire — a safety hazard, they’d said. News had prepared her usual screed about town hall corruption in one of the northern suburbs