Page 2 of I Need You to Read This
“You think theHeraldis unbiased?” Raymond says, his voicerising. “You don’t think that they are in the Democrats’ pockets with all their politics? And don’t get me started on how they covered those protests last year.”
“Oh, right, because you were a cop they must all be good.” Janice rolls her eyes.
“I was adetective, Janice, and I didn’t say that.”
“Bah!” Janice isn’t having any of it.
Oh boy.Alex leans back with her coffee mug and ignores them. It’s an argument they have at least weekly. She takes a bite of her bagel. The work she will have to do later is already weighing on her. Her copywriting job is so boring sometimes it makes her want to cry.
“You wouldn’t understand nuance, Ray,” Janice says. “Not if it came up to you and bit you on the ass.” Her red-polished fingernail taps the counter for emphasis.
“So I want to be entertained, sue me!” Raymond says, exasperated. The two of them know exactly how to rile each other up. “More toast, please.”
“More? You’ve just had four slices.” Janice narrows her eyes.
“What, are you the toast police now? Last I heard this was a free country where a man could order as much toast as he can pay for!” Raymond pushes his plate forward. Alex watches warily as Janice’s lips tighten. To her relief, the shriek of a fire truck outside interrupts them. By the time it passes, Janice has moved back toward the kitchen and Raymond seems to have calmed down. Alex picks up her mug, settling into the hum of the diner, appreciating the whir of the coffee makers and clatter of silverware.
It may not be perfect, but there are things you need to keep grounded when you live in a big city. Routines that you create for yourself, the small town you make of your daily movements. These mornings at the Bluebird had kept her from collapsing with loneliness when she first arrived in the city. Alex remembers herself then, shy and skittish. When she first moved into the apartment above the nail salon on Eighty-Sixth Street, she didn’t venture far. The Bluebird was convenient, right across the street, a place from which she could retreat quickly if needed to the safety of her shoebox of an apartment.
All she wanted to do then was to be a part of it all, to be one among those millions in the swirl of Manhattan’s streets. And she thinks, taking a sip of weak coffee, that she has probably succeeded. No one really knows her here. Except for Janice and Raymond, she is nearly invisible. It’s part of the magic of New York, Alex often muses, that you can be completely anonymous while also feeling so interconnected to the people and places around you.
“Oh, look, Alexis, isn’t this that advice columnist you loved?” Raymond says as he turns the page in his paper. “Frannie? The one who was murdered?”
“Francis?” Alex’s heart jerks in her chest at the thought of her hero, Francis Keen.
“That’s the one, yeah. Looks like they are trying to replace her.”
“What? No!” Alex yanks the paper from his hands. “They wouldn’t dare.”
“Grabby, grabby,” Raymond tuts, letting go of the pages. Alex smooths the paper out onto the counter in front of her, her heart pounding.
In the photo Francis Keen is standing behind her desk at theHerald.She wears a white shirt rolled up at the sleeves, her gray-blond hair loose around her shoulders. A chain of heavy gold links glitters below the V of her collar. She smiles at the camera so warmly that you’d think she knows the photographer. Through the window behind her, Midtown Manhattan gleams geometrically. It’s the same photo they ran last year when Francis’s body was found on the floor in her beach house.
The headline reads:
For theHerald’sBeloved Advice Column Dear Constance, Attempts at a New Beginning after Tragedy
“Well, it’s not like she can write it herself anymore, can she?” Raymond says. “Why not give someone else a chance? People loved that column, didn’t they?”
Alex shakes her head. “You don’t understand, Ray. She was the best. There’s no one who can give advice the way Francis Keen did.”
Since she first picked up a copy of theHerald, Alex was a religious reader of Dear Constance. She doesn’t know how anyone could not be drawn to Francis’s column. That special way she had of perceiving things about people by reading between the lines, things that they probably didn’t even know about themselves. Despite her ability to understand what a person should do in any given situation, her advice was never preachy, never condescending. Francis’s words felt like those of a true friend, one who innately understood you, who would do whatever was in her power to make sure you succeeded. Nothing could make you feel like you weren’t alone in the world like reading one of her columns.
After Francis’s death Alex had looked for comfort in other advice columns, but the magic just was not there in any of them. The advice was staid and unimaginative and often just plain bad. It left her with a cold, sad feeling.
“I still can’t believe they never caught the person who killed her,” Alex says, shuddering. Francis Keen’s murder was so unexpected, so terrible and violent and senseless, that Alex had felt off-kilter for weeks after.
“It was a bad detective on that case,” Raymond grumbles, his fingers shaking as he tries to open a single-serving creamer cup. “That Delfonte twit. I knew him back in the day. Spoiled brat who never wanted to work for anyone.” Raymond’s tremor has gotten worse lately, Alex notes, watching out of the corner of her eye as he struggles to find a grip on the creamer’s paper tab.
“Oh, and you would have solved her murder single-handed, I suppose?” Janice swoops by with the long-awaited toast, clearly skeptical.
“I would have,” Raymond insists, still grappling with the plastic container. “There’s a reason I was a good detective, Janice. There is a logical order to these things, you have to be methodical and patient.” His fingers fumble again with the creamer and he smashes it onto the counter in frustration.
“That sounds like you, Ray,” Janice says dryly.
Alex takes the creamer from him and peels the lid back. He gives her a silent nod of appreciation and tips it into his mug.
“I should go,” Alex says, feeling suddenly agitated.
