establishments that sold dark red, tightly furled passion at the counter for a dollar ninety-
eight. It was still wrapped in clear plastic, and Axel had stuck it inside a Snapple bottle
filled with water. Axel was the music critic, and Brazil knew he was watching this very
minute from not very far away, in features. Brazil slid a cardboard box out from under
his desk.
He had not finished moving in, not that the task was especially formidable. But he had
been assigned nothing yet and had finished the first draft of a self-assigned piece on what
it had been like to go through the volunteer police academy. He could add and cut and
polish only so many times, and was terrified by the thought of sitting in the newsroom
with nothing to do. He had made it a habit to scan all six editions of the newspaper from
wooden spools near the city directories. He often read the bulletin board, checked his
empty mailbox, and had been meticulous and deliberately slow in moving his
professional possessions the very short distance of forty-five feet.
This included a Rolodex with few meaningful phone numbers, for how to reach television
networks and various shows, and stamp collectors or Rick Flair, was of little importance
now. Brazil had plenty of notepads, pens, pencils, copies of his stories, city maps, and
almost all of it could fit in the briefcase he had found on sale at Belk department store
when he had been hired. It was glossy burgundy leather with brass clasps, and he felt
very proud when he gripped it.
He had no photographs to arrange on his desk, for he was an only child and had no pets.
It entered his mind that he might call his house to check on things. When Brazil had
returned from the track to shower and change, his mother had been doing the usual,
sleeping on the couch in the living room, TV loudly tuned in to a soap opera she would
not remember later. Mrs. Brazil watched life every day on Channel 7, and could not
describe a single plot. Television was her only connection to humans, unless she counted
the relationship with her son.
Half an hour after Brazil appeared in the newsroom, the telephone rang on his desk,
startling him. He snatched it up, pulse trotting ahead as he glanced around, wondering
who knew he worked here.
“Andy Brazil,” he said very professionally.
The heavy breathing was recognizable, the voice of the same pervert who had been
calling for months. Brazil could hear her lying on her bed, sofa, fainting couch, wherever
she got the job done.
“In my hand,” the pervert said in her low, creepy tone.
“Got it.
Sliding in, out like a trombone . ”
Brazil dropped the receiver into its cradle and shot Axel an accusing glance, but Axel was
talking to the food critic. This was the first time in Brazil’s life that he had ever gotten
obscene phone calls. The only other situation to come even close was when he was
blasting his BMW at the Wash & Shine in nearby Cornelius one day and a pasty-faced
creep in a yellow VW bug pulled up and asked him if he wanted to earn twenty dollars.
Brazil’s first thought was he was being offered a job washing the guy’s car since Brazil
was doing such a fine job on his own. This had been wrong. Brazil had turned the high
pressure wand on the guy for free. He had memorized the creep’s plate number and still
had it in his wallet, waiting for the day when he could get him locked up. What the man
in the VW bug had proposed was a crime against nature, an ancient North Carolina law
no one could interpret. But what he had wanted in exchange for his cash had been clear.
Brazil could not fathom why anyone would want to do such a thing to a stranger. He
wouldn’t even drink out of the same bottle with most people he knew.
Brazil was not naive, but his sexual experiences at Davidson had been more incomplete
than those of his roommate, this he knew. The last semester of his senior year, Brazil had