Reading Is My Business
Reading Is My Business
By Keir Graff
Booklist, May 1, 2008
(Illustration by Jim Lange)
I woke up somewhere under the Loop. I was lying across two handicapped seats in a southbound Red Line train. I got off at the next station, crossed the platform, and got on a train going north. The people in my car looked as miserable as only Chicagoans in late February can look. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window. I made the miserable people look like they were at Mardi Gras.
I got off at Chicago Avenue and rode the escalators up to the street. On the second one, I became fascinated by a guy who stopped walking 10 feet from the top and stood poised like he was about to jump out of an airplane. He didn’t look like a tourist, but you never can tell. He made the landing, but I can’t say the same for myself. I was so busy watching him that I stumbled where the escalator met the sidewalk and fell headlong. I’m a pretty big guy, so I think it made an impression.
“He doesn’t look like a tourist,” I heard someone say.
I collected my bag and climbed to my feet. The sunlight looked like day-old piss and was just as warm. The sidewalk was a stew of rock salt, mud, and melting snow. My left foot felt wet. I looked down, thinking I’d blundered into some dog shit. It was even worse: I was missing my left boot. It must have happened during the train ride. But who needed a size-12 mukluk? And why would they take the one with the hole in it?
I turned right on Wabash and hoofed it the two blocks to work. The good part about having a soaking, freezing foot was that it took my mind off the gong clanging inside my skull.
Jessie, the guard, is a sweet, grandmotherly thing unless you’re looking for a place to sit down. Once I watched her, all of five feet tall, give the bum’s rush to a couple of well-traveled outdoorsmen who wanted to savor their cigarette butts on the front steps. I had planned to offer her a hand, but by the time I got there, I felt so bad for the bums that I slipped them a five when she wasn’t looking.
I flashed Jessie my ID and a hopeful smile as I lurched through the door. She frowned, but she let me in. Lucky thing because I lost my ID six months ago. But I find that an expired Sam’s Club card works in a pinch.
I gasped my way up the back stairs, then took the long way around to my office. It was wasted effort: taped to my computer screen was a full-page note: MY OFFICE ASAP. I recognized the handwriting on the hieroglyphic. It belonged to my boss, Bill Ott. I tore the note off, crumpled it into a ball, and shot it in an extravagant arc toward the wastebasket, tongue dangling and wrist flopping just like Jordan used to do it. I pumped my first—swish!—and looked up to see Ott standing in the doorway.
Ott was old-school, by-the-book, and any other hard-tack cliché you can think of. My head hurt too much to come up with a fourth.
“Jesus, Graff,” he said, shaking his head. “What time did you quit drinking?”
Define “quit,” I wanted to say. Instead I fished a tin of Altoids out of my desk drawer and popped two.
“Just coming to see you,” I said.
He nodded at the breath mints.
“Those might do you some good if you used them like soap.”
I popped a third, grinding it between my teeth. I’d actually quit drinking last night—sometime around 3 a.m.—but in my mind I had already poured my first of the morning. As a rule, I don’t drink at my desk, but sometimes you have to sand the edges off, particularly if you were on the job until the wee small hours, knee deep in blood, guts, and double-crosses.
Ott pulled out a chair, looked at the upholstery, and thought better of sitting down.
“As much as I enjoy anticipating your repartee,” he said. “I’ll make this quick.”
I sat down, peeled off my soggy sock, and slipped my left foot into one of the brogans I kept under my desk. I rolled up my sleeves, losing a button in the process, and wiggled the mouse to turn off the screen saver.
“Let’s have it,” I said.
“Michael Connelly’s writing a book for Hard Case Crime,” he said. “Big star, hot publisher, huge story.”
“Sounds great,” I said. “Let me at it.”
“We can’t find the galley,” he said.
“So tell them we want another one.”
“I need the review tomorrow,” he said. “My moles tell me PW, LJ, and Kirkus have already gone to press with this one, and we can’t let them scoop us. So: find the book. Write the review. Have it on my desk at 8 a.m. tomorrow. That’s”—he looked at his watch—“22 hours, give or take.”
“On your desk literally, or—?”
“Figure of speech,” he said. “Just get it in the database.”
“No problem, Chief,” I said. Warm relief flooded my body. He wasn’t firing me, after all.
“Or you’re fired,” he added.
The relief turned cold and I shivered. Ott left. But still, how hard could it be to find a missing book in an office . . . jammed to the rafters with thousands of books? I opened my bottom desk drawer with a toe. This required a fairly coarse grain of sandpaper.
