not the only one, you know.
I'm not the only guy in this town who needed a fresh
start."
Tess and Crow were so mesmerized by this
performance that Esskay was able to make another lunge toward the
Chinese food, snaring a gnawed sparerib from Crow's plate.
Her victory was short-lived: she began retching, the bone lodged deep
in her throat.
"Try the Heimlich
maneuver," Tess cried, panicking. Unruffled, Crow reached his
hand down the dog's throat and extracted the rib, gooey with
drool and sauce. Esskay stared at the bone as if she had never seen it
before, then tried to snatch it back from him.
"Pavlov, indeed," Tess
snorted in disgust, but her heart was still beating a little fast.
"This stupid mutt can't learn anything. She
can't even remember she almost choked to death on that same
damn bone ten seconds ago."
"Oh, I don't
know," Crow said, forgiving as always. "We all have
things we desire even though we know they wouldn't be good
for us. Don't you have a few spareribs in your
life?"
A rhetorical question, one of
Crow's flights of fancy, nothing more. To Tess's
consternation, an image of Jack Sterling flashed through her
mind—his blue eyes, the strange little sensation she had felt
when they shook hands, as if he had caught a spark of static
electricity from the carpet in the conference room and passed it on to
her. Blushing, she hid her hot face in Esskay's hotter neck,
stroking the dog until she was sure the telltale color had subsided.
Chapter 8
"I can think of five other things I should be doing right now. I really
don't have time to be your tour guide."
It was Friday morning, and metro editor
Marvin Hailey was leading Tess through the newsroom, which looked more
like an insurance office gone to seed. Scurrying behind the reluctant
Hailey, Tess tried to keep tabs on where she was going in this maze of
cubicles, dented metal filing cabinets, and ancient computers rigged
with various accessories to make them slightly less lethal to the users
and their wrists. Cardboard file boxes were stacked around some desks,
creating makeshift walls, while old newspapers rose toward the ceiling
in shaky yellowing towers. Recycling was apparently too avant-garde for
the staid Beacon-Light .
"It looks like you're
running out of space," Tess said, trying to make conversation
with the unsmiling editor.
"We are," Hailey said,
glancing over his shoulder as if acknowledging even this obvious fact
was fraught with risk.
"Any chance of the whole operation
moving out to the 'burbs? I know you're already
printing the paper out there."
"We had to have new presses, and
it made sense for delivery purposes to be outside the Beltway. But the
other departments will remain here until Five—uh,
Pfieffer—can get a good price for the property."
"Forever, in other
words."
Hailey grunted, a safely neutral noise.
It was 9 A.M. ,
a rare quiet moment in the cycle of an all-day newspaper. Within an
hour, the skeleton crew of overnight editors would put to bed the
"evening" paper, a publication identical to the
morning paper except in layout and the updates on predawn carnage
provided by a lone police reporter. Most of the other reporters had yet
to arrive, with the exception of a dark-haired woman with her feet
propped on an open desk drawer, reading the morning paper while she
listened to a police scanner. A phone rang on the city desk, but no one
was there to answer it.
"So this is where you make the
magic happen," Tess said.
Marvin Hailey lunged for the still ringing
phone, succeeding only in knocking over an old mug of coffee. Tess
watched him try to stem the milky-brown spill with wadded-up
newspapers, only to spread the puddle over more of the desk top. Such a
dry husk of a man—shoulders speckled with dandruff, lips
whitish and cracked from constant, nervous licking. He looked as if he
might break up and blow away in a strong breeze.
"Oh, hell," he sighed.
The newspaper had finally absorbed the coffee, only to leave his hands
black
I'm not the only guy in this town who needed a fresh
start."
Tess and Crow were so mesmerized by this
performance that Esskay was able to make another lunge toward the
Chinese food, snaring a gnawed sparerib from Crow's plate.
Her victory was short-lived: she began retching, the bone lodged deep
in her throat.
"Try the Heimlich
maneuver," Tess cried, panicking. Unruffled, Crow reached his
hand down the dog's throat and extracted the rib, gooey with
drool and sauce. Esskay stared at the bone as if she had never seen it
before, then tried to snatch it back from him.
"Pavlov, indeed," Tess
snorted in disgust, but her heart was still beating a little fast.
"This stupid mutt can't learn anything. She
can't even remember she almost choked to death on that same
damn bone ten seconds ago."
"Oh, I don't
know," Crow said, forgiving as always. "We all have
things we desire even though we know they wouldn't be good
for us. Don't you have a few spareribs in your
life?"
A rhetorical question, one of
Crow's flights of fancy, nothing more. To Tess's
consternation, an image of Jack Sterling flashed through her
mind—his blue eyes, the strange little sensation she had felt
when they shook hands, as if he had caught a spark of static
electricity from the carpet in the conference room and passed it on to
her. Blushing, she hid her hot face in Esskay's hotter neck,
stroking the dog until she was sure the telltale color had subsided.
Chapter 8
"I can think of five other things I should be doing right now. I really
don't have time to be your tour guide."
It was Friday morning, and metro editor
Marvin Hailey was leading Tess through the newsroom, which looked more
like an insurance office gone to seed. Scurrying behind the reluctant
Hailey, Tess tried to keep tabs on where she was going in this maze of
cubicles, dented metal filing cabinets, and ancient computers rigged
with various accessories to make them slightly less lethal to the users
and their wrists. Cardboard file boxes were stacked around some desks,
creating makeshift walls, while old newspapers rose toward the ceiling
in shaky yellowing towers. Recycling was apparently too avant-garde for
the staid Beacon-Light .
"It looks like you're
running out of space," Tess said, trying to make conversation
with the unsmiling editor.
"We are," Hailey said,
glancing over his shoulder as if acknowledging even this obvious fact
was fraught with risk.
"Any chance of the whole operation
moving out to the 'burbs? I know you're already
printing the paper out there."
"We had to have new presses, and
it made sense for delivery purposes to be outside the Beltway. But the
other departments will remain here until Five—uh,
Pfieffer—can get a good price for the property."
"Forever, in other
words."
Hailey grunted, a safely neutral noise.
It was 9 A.M. ,
a rare quiet moment in the cycle of an all-day newspaper. Within an
hour, the skeleton crew of overnight editors would put to bed the
"evening" paper, a publication identical to the
morning paper except in layout and the updates on predawn carnage
provided by a lone police reporter. Most of the other reporters had yet
to arrive, with the exception of a dark-haired woman with her feet
propped on an open desk drawer, reading the morning paper while she
listened to a police scanner. A phone rang on the city desk, but no one
was there to answer it.
"So this is where you make the
magic happen," Tess said.
Marvin Hailey lunged for the still ringing
phone, succeeding only in knocking over an old mug of coffee. Tess
watched him try to stem the milky-brown spill with wadded-up
newspapers, only to spread the puddle over more of the desk top. Such a
dry husk of a man—shoulders speckled with dandruff, lips
whitish and cracked from constant, nervous licking. He looked as if he
might break up and blow away in a strong breeze.
"Oh, hell," he sighed.
The newspaper had finally absorbed the coffee, only to leave his hands
black
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