these days, women especially. Both of them pointing forty-fucking-caliber
semiautomatics at his head. Now where the hell did that come from? Fucking Mars?
These ladies beam down, or something? He was still stunned, and had sat up on his narrow bunk this morning thinking yesterday on the bus didn’t happen.
Then he focused on the steel toilet bowl that he had not bothered to flush last night. His
shin was throbbing so bad, and had a lump on it the size of an orange, the skin broken in
the middle, like a navel, where that pointy metal toe had connected. Now that he
explored the situation a little further, he should have been suspicious of two rich ladies
like that getting on the Greyhound. No way people like them take the bus. Some of the
guys were talking and laughing up and down the cells, going on and on about him getting
his ass kicked by some old woman with a big pocketbook, everybody making fun of
Martino. He got out a cigarette, and thought about suing. He thought about getting
another tattoo, might as well while he was here.
t^ Brazil’s day was not going especially well, either. He and Packer were editing another
self-initiated, rather large piece Brazil was doing on mothers alone in a world without
men. Brazil continued to come across typos, spaces, blank lines that he knew he had not
caused.
Someone had been breaking into his computer basket and going through his files. He
was explaining this to his metro editor, Packer, as they rolled through paragraphs,
inspecting the violation.
“See,” Brazil was hotly saying, and he was in uniform,
ready for yet another night on the street.
“It’s weird. The last couple days I keep finding stuff like this.”
“You sure you’re not doing it? You do tend to go through your stories a lot,” Packer said.
What the editor had observed about Brazil’s remarkable productivity had now reached the
level of not humanly possible. This kid dressed like a cop frightened Packer. Packer
didn’t even much want to sit next to Brazil anymore. Brazil wasn’t normal. He was
getting commendations from the police, and averaging three bylines every morning, even
on days when he supposedly was off. Not to mention, his work Was unbelievably good
for someone so inexperienced who had never been to journalism school. Packer
suspected that Brazil would win a Pulitzer by the time he was thirty, possibly sooner. For
that reason, Packer intended to remain Brazil’s editor, even if the job was exhausting,
intense, and unnerving, and caused Packer to hate life more with each passing day.
This morning was a typical example. The alarm had buzzed at six, and Packer did not
want to get up. But he did. Mildred, his wife, was her typical cheery self, cooking
oatmeal in the kitchen, while Dufus, her purebred Boston Terrier puppy, skittered around
sideways and walleyed and looking for something else to chew, or pee or poop on.
Packer was tucking in his shirt all the way around as he entered this domestic scene,
trying to wake up, and wondering if his wife was losing what marbles she had left.
“Mildred,” he said.
“It’s summer. Oatmeal is not a good hot-weather food.”
“Of course it is.” She happily stirred.
“Good for your high blood pressure.”
Dufus jumped and fussed at Packer, dancing around his feet, trying to climb him,
grabbing cuffs in snaggly teeth. Packer never touched his wife’s puppy if he could help
it, and had refused any input into its development beyond naming it, over objections from
Mildred, who had made it a condition of their marriage that she would never be without
one of these ugly little dogs from her childhood. Dufus did not see very well. From his
perspective, Packer was a very big and unfriendly tree, a utility pole, some other edifice,
maybe a fence. Whenever Packer came within scent, Dufus was airborne and in grass
and squatting and relieving other basic functions that meant nothing to Dufus. He untied
both of Packer’s shoelaces.
Packer made his way across the newsroom as if he saw no color in the world, only gray.
He was tucking in his shirt, heading to the men’s room, feeling like he had to go and