“Oh, my gosh. You’re hopeless.”
“I know, I know. I’m glad you came in to tell me. Are you still wanting to work all summer?”
She nodded vigorously. “Oh, definitely. I’ll be trying to get on the school paper as soon I get there, so the more bylines, the better. And money is always nice.”
I smiled wryly. “As little as you make here?”
She held up her hands. “Hey, a paid byline is a paid byline. Do you have any idea how many of my friends are writing for ‘exposure?’ As in, for free? No, thanks. I’ll take what I can get.”
“That’s right. Never give away for free what you want other people to value.”
Sami smiled brightly. “I like that!”
“It can be a little tougher for writers to stick to that motto than most other people, but it’s worth the effort.”
“Ugh. Yes. I totally get that. Anyway, while I’m here, do you have any stories for me? I already emailed you this Sunday’s story. I’d like to get a jump on next week’s as soon as I can.”
“Sure. But maybe you already have a better story. We’ve got, what, three community colleges within driving distance of here? Why don’t you talk to each of them, discuss the pros and cons of attending community college versus a traditional university for the first couple of years, and then highlight what each school’s specialties are? After all, a lot of students are trying to make decisions for their fall attendance right now, just like you.”
Sami jumped to her feet. Ah, the exuberance of youth.
“That’s an excellent idea!”
“This can be a pretty big story. I’ll contact the schools today myself and see if they’d like us to include their course catalogs for the summer or fall, if they have them.”
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What I’d really be doing was persuading them to pay extra for the privilege.
“That’s perfect, Jeff.” She paused and turned back before leaving the office. “Thanks for being so cool about me leaving. I was a little nervous about telling you.”
I shook my head. “Nervous? Sami, everybody knows you aren’t long for this town. This job was just a pit-stop for you. I’m happy for you. Moving on is exactly what you’re supposed to do.”
“Thanks, Jeff. That’s what I think, too.”
I picked up the phone as soon as she left. While I didn’t expect her to contact any of the schools today, I wanted to convince them of the merits of embedded advertising before they discovered the story had already been assigned. It was already Friday afternoon, and God knew schools didn’t work on the weekends. I needed to catch all of them before the end of the day. Assuming they hadn’t left early as it was. I had the feeling office hours were a little more flexible at the community colleges.
I didn’t know this from experience, though. I hadn’t gone to school myself. I’d fancied myself a budding Hunter S. Thompson, with a slightly more practical fear of the effects of illegal substances and of running afoul of the law. So basically nothing like Hunter S. Thompson. But I had done some traveling in lieu of school and tried the learn-by-doing route. And look where that had gotten me.
My mouth twisted bitterly. I couldn’t blame my lack of success on a lack of schooling. No, it had everything to do with a lack of try. At some point, I’d settled in and grown content with mediocrity. I couldn’t even identify exactly when it had happened. At least if there’d been some seminal event, my surrender would have been slightly more acceptable. But there hadn’t been. I’d just gotten lazy. It hadn’t seemed worth it anymore, to risk everything on the slim chance that anyone would read what I’d written and think it actually meant something.
Instead, I’d taken the same job Sami had now. Don’t misunderstand me―my bills were paid by working as the night clerk at the Holiday Inn Express out by the highway. The newspaper job had been just a nod to my earlier ambitions, some way of not admitting that I’d given up on everything I ever wanted. The editor back then, Samson Hendricks, had been nearly ninety years old and only too happy to find someone who might take on some of his duties for him. When he’d passed away just eight months after I landed in Brisby, he’d named me heir apparent, such as it was.
Thirteen across: six letters, white wine, Pouilly
About forty-five minutes after picking up the phone, I’d managed one hundred percent success. It had been simple enough. I really only had to persuade the first college. Once the other two heard the first had been willing to pay to have the course catalogs included, they didn’t want to be left out. It turned out to be too early for the fall catalogs, but we could include the summer editions. And now they were almost certain to run the fall catalogs once those were available. Residuals, residuals.
The flush of victory faded quickly. Then it was just me, staring out the picture window at the people walking by on the sidewalks. Not even that many people. I felt like a fish in an aquarium that had been shoved behind a bookshelf in a backroom den.
I had to get through two more days until Sunday. Andy wouldn’t approve of my tactics for survival, but no one can condemn a drowning man for dragging his rescuer down with him. It’s not a conscious choice, after all. It’s an instinct, too powerful to overcome. Unfortunate, but inescapable. And I don’t know how not to survive. Suicide is not a compulsion I have ever understood.
Abraham Lincoln Ranked As Best President In History Third Time In A Row
It was Friday, my story was written, I’d had a little encouraging moment with my youngest reporter, and I’d scored some more advertising. Nearly three days sober was too many. I’d gone home last night to Ada’s studio room again. I’d fallen asleep there again. I wasn’t going to do that tonight. My teeth ached from grinding them in my sleep. Days were gray, but nights were stained with umber, chartreuse, magenta, ultramarine, cobalt, cadmium yellow, crimson, indian orange. I woke up with the taste of vermillion on my tongue, my eyes burning yellow light.
I didn’t miss the colors anymore. I wanted to escape them, banish them, forget them. I wanted to spill ink so black and thick across them that no hint of pigment could be seen. I wanted every shade but gray forgotten.
Tattoo Parlor Covers Up Racist Ink For Free
“Near-Bird” Dinosaur Reveals Secrets Of Early Flight
I locked the office door. Not right away, damn it. I made it halfway down the street before a nagging worry consumed my thoughts, and the only thing for it was to turn back and check.
Sure enough, the door swung open at my push.
But I locked it this time.
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Lorna wasn’t behind the bar at the Long Tall tonight. I didn’t recognize the man who’d taken her place. Younger than me by about ten years, but with a dry weariness around the eyes that made him ageless. He was slender and white, with what seemed to be the now-requisite goatee and a quicksilver way of moving that made me think that he could have been an actor or a dancer in another life. In this life, though, he was just another hipster-cum-bartender in a purple vest.
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I wasn’t sorry that Lorna wasn’t there. I liked her well enough, but I wasn’t in the mood for a friendly face tonight. This strange bartender was the closest I could get to anonymity in this town, and I’d take it.
“Gin martini, two onions,” I told him.
“Onions?”
I choked back a laugh, imagining him picturing diced hot dog onions floating to the bottom of the martini glass. Next he’d ask if I wanted relish too.
It wasn’t really his fault. I knew Lorna kept the martini onions just for me. The few other customers who ordered martinis around here―mostly middle-aged women who fancied themselves James Bond babes―generally asked for olives if anything at all.
“Martini onion,” I clarified. “She keeps them in the fridge under the icemaker
.”
He nodded, taking my word for it. He slipped off to make small talk with the other end of the bar as he shook my drink. He really does move fast, I noted, shaking my head. Either he’d move on or he’d slow down. No need for speed in this town.
He reached under the counter, located the jar of onions, speared two on a toothpick, and plopped them into my glass with a flourish.
“Anything else? Something to eat?”
I shook my head. “Maybe later.”
Frank Turner’s “Anymore” was playing on the jukebox. What asshole wanted to play that song? I wondered angrily.
The single hardest thing I ever had to do …
Dear Lord. This wasn’t some country joint. Most nights you could count on raucous rock music or if someone was feeling really nostalgic, some eighties ballads. But this … I flattened my hands against the bar. This was too much to ask anyone to listen to.
I didn’t usually pay a lot of attention to music. Not just here in the bar, in general. Ada used to make fun of me. She said she’d never met someone less impacted by music. For my part, I couldn’t understand how a person could sublimate their own thoughts and impulses to some stranger who had strung together a series of sounds and percussions. Ada had gone on at length about how music was associated with events, with emotions, with people, with places, and how just a few notes could cast her into another time and place entirely.
I thought that sounded awful. And silly. People didn’t even fight the inclination. They gave in to it, sought it out. Wallowed in sad songs when they were broken-hearted. Most movie directors hardly even bothered with emotional depth or decent screen-writing anymore. Just play the appropriate soundtrack in the background, and the audience will supply all the content lacking in the script or the acting.
I know I shouldn’t have kissed you as I left. Darling, I should have been stronger …
I took a drink and pushed back from the bar. I couldn’t do anything about this song, but I could damn well make sure the next one was better. Who would have even guessed that Frank Turner was a selection out here in this backwater?
A woman was dropping quarters into the jukebox when I walked up.
A scale of achromatic colors having several, usually ten, equal gradations ranging from white to black, used in television and photography
Silver hair―not gray, silver―tumbled down her back, nearly to her waist, in loose curls. She was wearing a dingy cotton dress that could have been sold in stores today or thirty years ago, a sleeveless, tight-waisted affair that fell to her calves. White leather sandals wound their way up her ankles and disappeared beneath the material of her dress.
She turned as I approached.
“Claire,” she said, extending her hand.
She could have been my age. Then again, she could have been old enough to be my mother. It was impossible to tell, and she didn’t appear to care which way it was taken. She wore no makeup, and the lines around her eyes and mouth weren’t camouflaged in any way. Still, something innately sensual exuded from her.
And her eyes.
Damn it all to hell.
They looked exactly like Ada’s eyes.
Which seemed particularly unfair because this woman resembled Ada in no other way. Ada’s gloriously youthful skin carried the dark blush of her Hopi mother, and she was a good three inches shorter than this woman. Ada’s last name of Grigori had been just a relic of her stepfather―her biological father, whoever he’d been, must have been white, considering her startling blue eyes.
Startling blue eyes that now held my own.
Almost against my will, I accepted her hand. It was cool, dry, and firm.
“Jeff,” I replied. “Jefferson Paine.”
She laughed, a low, husky sound utterly unlike Ada’s outrageous bark.
“Geez. That must have been a lot for a kid to live up to.”
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.
If at all.
Do you want to know who you are? Act! Action will delineate and define you.
I dropped her hand.
“Were you wanting to add some songs?”
She slid out of the way, gesturing to the jukebox with a grace that almost made it look as if she were dancing. Something about her made me feel off-balance, clumsy. I wished, oddly, that I were still holding her hand.
I remembered Ada’s hand. The way her fingers had slipped out of mine in the cold air, stiff and lifeless.
Not lifeless. Ada could never be described that way. But God. So cold.
Something more upbeat surged out of the jukebox.
Darling, sweet lover, won’t you help me to recover?
“You really have a Frank Turner obsession, don’t you?” I asked Claire, not bothering to hide the bitterness in my tone.
“I’m just delighted it’s an option,” she said, and she did look delighted. “That was a pleasant surprise. Are you a fan?”
I wasn’t delighted, but I also had been surprised. I’d never heard anyone else playing it in here.
Ansel Adams, Georgia O’Keefe, and Orville Cox
Black-and-white meets so much outrageous fucking color. Why couldn’t that have been us?
“Uh, I wouldn’t say I’m a fan. I’m not a big music person to begin with.”
“Not a big music person,” she repeated slowly, like someone would repeat a phrase in a foreign language they did not speak. “But you do know who he is?”
“I … knew someone who liked his music.”
“I see,” she said musingly. It struck me as terrifying that she might actually see. But she went on.
“Not a music person, but,” she waved me forward, “you would like to make a selection?”
I was suddenly, overwhelmingly, exhausted by civility.
“A selection of anything but this.”
“Anything?”
I moved past her, tossing in quarters. Linkin Park and ICP might not be the most common choices for this bar, but they would do for tonight. Anything that lacked sentimentality would do. Something with a raw edge of rage was even better.
And the pictures and the papers got ruined by the rain …
Biophilia: (noun) 1. The love of life and the living world; 2. The affinity of human beings for other life forms
“Exactly how many Frank Turner songs are you playing?” I asked her. Logically, I knew I shouldn’t take it personally. But logic didn’t feel very compelling just now.
“I think I paid for every song on the album.”
“Oh, good. Good. That’s excellent. God damn it.”
She smiled, unperturbed. “I take it you don’t approve?”
“Who comes into a bar they’ve never been in before and proceeds to buy an entire album’s worth of sentimental bilge to force everyone else to listen to?”
“Wow.” She laughed again, and in spite of my annoyance, I found myself hanging on that sound.
“That was a lot of assumptions for one sentence.” She took my unresisting arm and drew it through her own as she walked us both back over to the bar. She released me, sliding onto the stool beside the one where my gin martini sat sweating.
“Pauli,” she called the hipster bartender over as if they were old friends, “can I get a strawberry daiquiri?”
He smiled crookedly. “Fresh strawberries just for you, Claire.”
I looked at her dumbfounded. I didn’t believe for a minute that this was her hangout. I also didn’t believe for a minute that the Long Tall had fresh strawberries, ever. But this was happening, all the same.
“Truth is what is, right?” she asked, as if reading my mind.
“Don’t talk to me about truth,” I told her fiercely, gulping my martini down.
Another laugh. I clung to it.
“What else is there to talk about?”
&n
bsp; “Most people in bars tell lies, I think.”
“Which is a truth in itself, isn’t it? Some things, some people, are best defined by the contrary.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
I waved the bartender―Pauli? Was that really his name? Or did she just call him that to be cute?―over and gestured toward my empty glass. He nodded and slid away in that mercurial way of his. Twenty seconds later, a fresh gin martini sat before me.
“Why the gin martini?” Claire asked, sipping blissfully at her icy daiquiri. “Hemingway is equally credited with the strawberry daiquiri. Not to mention his fondness for Chianti. Why on earth would you choose the bitterest of the three?”
I didn’t bother asking her why she assumed that my choice of drink had anything to do with Hemingway. I was going to say yes to the universe, I muttered to Ada under my breath. I was going to say yes.
“I only drink wine when I’m pretending.”
Claire nodded as if that made perfect sense. I stared at her face, memorizing every line, every fold of skin, the curve of her pale lips, the fan of dark black lashes against pale white skin.
Noun, a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person
“And daiquiris are just too much indulgence, is that it?”
I swallowed half my martini. “Hemingway ran an ambulance through World War I. He starved in Paris. I have subsisted in Brisby. Not really the same thing.”
“I’m not so sure drinking gin makes up for that.”
“Maybe it’s as close to penance as I choose to get.”
Blacking in and out in a strange flat in East London …
I ate a gin-soaked onion.
Claire’s hand covered mine. She wore no rings, I noted absently. Freckles and age spots spangled the flesh between pale blue veins, but the skin was smooth and soft. She smelled like warm leather and vanilla.
“Why are you here, Claire?”
She looked into my eyes. That blue, blue gaze. Why weren’t her eyes black? I felt like her eyes should have been black.
“I’m lonely,” she confessed softly. “And I know you miss me.”
Revised Bury the Lead Ebook Formatting Embedded Cover Page 13