"Dear Irene" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burke Jan)1I crumpled that one into a ball and spiked Pigskin right into the round file – and did it all left-handed. But after a moment, I pulled the letter back out of the trash. Setting aside my generally rotten mood that day, I decided Pigskin might be of help with this year’s office football pool. Going through my mail that Wednesday afternoon in late November, I had already sorted out the flyers on meetings and the invitations to local political wingdings. That left only the pile of the envelopes which were less easily identified. Some were handwritten, some typed, some bore computer-generated labels. Few had return addresses. I was unfazed by these unflattering descriptions of my internal organs. I admit that I was a little distracted, not paying much attention to the occasional crank among my readers’ correspondence. My mail isn’t always as oddball as it was that day, but the approach of certain major holidays seems to make nut cases reach for their stationery. Most are harmless, lonely people who just need Lydia Ames laughed as she read that one over my shoulder. She works at the paper as an ACE, or Assistant City Editor. “Going to show that one to your fiancé?” I gave her my best scowl. She’s known me since third grade, so she wasn’t much intimidated. She really delighted in that word “fiancé.” Like a lot of other people I know, she’s spent a number of years wondering if I would ever give her any reason to use it. I had been getting a lot of this “fiancé” stuff lately; given the way Frank Harriman had proposed, I doubt we could have managed a secret engagement. As if thinking about the very same thing, Lydia looked down at the new cast my orthopedist had just put on my right foot that afternoon. “Did you save the ‘Marry me, Irene’ cast?” “My She caught my tone. “I guess you’re really disappointed about having to wear another one.” “Yeah, I am. I hobbled in there with visions of being free of these damned things and look how I ended up.” “Well, at least you’re out of the sling, and the doctor did take the cast off your right hand.” “And replaced it with a splint.” “A removable splint.” “Terrific. He walks in and announces, ‘So today we’ll give you a new foot cast! This one will be easier to walk with! It’s made of fiberglass!’ Acting like I’d won a Rolls-Royce in a church raffle.” She didn’t say anything. I sighed, looking down at my latest orthopedic fashion accessory. Fiberglass. I was recovering from a run-in with a group of toughs who wanted to rearrange my bones. I was healing, but my emotions could still surprise me. This was my first week back at work, and I found I had to be on guard against sudden bouts of extreme frustration. “Sorry, Lydia. I’ll cheer up in a few minutes. Things aren’t going the way I planned. Thought I’d be running around, no casts, no slings, no splints. My day to be wrong. I’m also cranky because I feel useless around here.” “Just be patient with yourself, okay?” “I’ll try. But patience and I have been estranged for many years.” She laughed. “I don’t think you’ve been introduced.” Big trouble. Frank has complained that sometimes I seem to go around looking for trouble. Not a comforting thing to hear a homicide detective say, but maybe he’s right. After all, being a reporter often involves looking for somebody’s trouble. But it’s not supposed to become Poor P.J. “Sleepy” Jacobsen. What a lousy attempt at revenge. The previous August, I had brought the public’s attention to the slipshod way in which Sleepy ran his office as Assistant City Treasurer. I guess he hadn’t heard that old adage that says you shouldn’t pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel. The I WASN’T CONCENTRATING at all now, just flipping through the envelopes, bored silly. Among other injuries, my right shoulder had been dislocated and my right thumb had been broken, so I was slow as molasses on the keyboard. Over the last few days, I had managed to peck out a few commentary columns and a couple of obits. Lydia sent some rewriting my way, nothing that was on fire. MY THOUGHTS DRIFTED to Frank, and the conversation we had as he drove me back to work. “You know what you need?” he had said, glancing over at me. “You need a good story to work on. Something that will get your mind off your injuries.” “I’m not much use as a reporter right now. Besides, the most intriguing stories don’t just knock on the paper’s front door, looking for a reporter. You have to go out and find them. And I’m stuck at a desk.” Nobody’s right all the time. As I said, it was my day to be wrong. That November afternoon, trouble came looking for me. Trouble got lucky. There was a story waiting for me on my desk. It was over two thousand years old, but it would become big news in no time. |
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