Page 20 of I Need You to Read This
He gives a little snort and waves his hand in front of him. “Please. Real news these days is always the same. Bad. Your column, that’s the important thing. That’s what our readers want.”
Alex doesn’t know what to say. “It’s fine. Really, I’m doing just fine. It’s only been a couple of days anyway.” She suddenly wants this uncomfortable exchange to be over.
“No. It’s no excuse.” He shakes his head, disgusted with himself. “I always make sure I give my best to my staff. I want you to know that this is not typical of me.”
“I’m sure. I remember reading about how much Francis respected you,” Alex says diplomatically. It’s true. In every interview Alex had read while Francis was alive, she’d mentioned Howard’s name.A great editor, she called him.A moral compass.What would she think of the man sneaking around by her office after hours? Was this his normal behavior? Alex looks at the man before her and tries to see him as a moral compass but just can’t.
Howard’s face goes slack at the mention of Francis’s name. His legs waver and he reaches a hand out to steady himself against the wall, but he stumbles and falls toward her. Alex winces, closing her eyes as his hand flies toward her face. His palm lands flat against the wall just next to her head.
As she carefully opens her eyes, she notices the pale stripe on his ring finger. The indentation where his wedding band had been. What has happened? Alex thinks of the beautiful woman from the photos. Now she can see the strain in his eyes. Is that what she has been witnessing this week, the end of Howard Demetri’s marriage?
“Oh, my goodness, look at me! Long day and I completely missed lunch,” he says in nearly a whisper, pushing himself back upright. Andthen she smells it. Something sharp and familiar on his breath.Whiskey. She draws away from him, against the wall. He doesn’t seem to notice.
“Francis always had a way of finding the right letter,” he says suddenly, his posture straightening.
“What was that?” Alex asks, trying to keep her voice from shaking.
He frowns. “She always said that she would answer the first one in a week that made her cry.”
“Thank you,” Alex says, her heart thudding. She eyes him carefully. But he turns away from her now, swaying as he goes back toward the newsroom, the scent of whiskey trailing him down the hallway.
She feels a shiver at her back as she starts down the hall in the opposite direction. As jarring as the exchange was for her, Alex can tell that Howard hadn’t expected to see her either. Which makes her question, if he wasn’t coming to see her, what was he doing there?
Dear Constance,
Ever since I graduated from high school, I’ve never let myself think too hard about what I might want. That kind of thing has always felt like a recipe for making myself miserable. It’s not like I have many options. But lately I have been thinking a lot about who I might want to be.
It’s still hard for me to think of the apartment as mine. It’s so modern. There is no clutter, no sign that anyone really lives here at all. The things I brought with me easily fit into a couple of drawers in the bedroom.
“Where is all your stuff?” I asked Brian once when I first was there.
“What do you mean?” he said, looking around. “It’s right here.”
I followed his eyes to the square cement coffee table and the sleek black credenza. I’d looked when he was in the other room and there was nothing inside it.
“No, I mean like your pictures, your books, papers, that sort of thing.”
“I like to keep things clean. I don’t need all that junk.”
“Maybe we could buy a few paintings or something for the walls,” I said, starting to imagine the ways I’d fix the place up, the colorful curtains, some flowers in vases around the apartment.
“Why would we do that? Isn’t this good enough for you?” Brian said, his eyes narrowing. It was just a flash of annoyance, and then his face cleared and it was gone, but it gave me a sinking feeling like this place wasn’t really mine.
We spend most of our evenings at his apartment drinking wine. We drink a lot of wine, too much for me a lot of the time. I try to hide it when I feel like my head spins, but Brian seems to think it’s cute when I act a little drunk.
I was laying with my head on his chest. “You are the smartestwoman I know. You could do anything you set your mind to.” No one calls me smart. His fingers ran through my hair.
“You know, you could quit that place,” he said, surprising me.
“Sam’s?”
“Yeah. I don’t like it,” he said, pulling himself up on his elbow to look at me. “You know, I’ve seen the old man watching you through the window when I pick you up after work. It’s weird.”
I’ve known Sam a long time, ever since I was a little kid. And Brian is right, he has been acting strange lately. But he’s not a bad person. I didn’t say anything though. I didn’t want to spoil the perfect moment we were having. His hand playing with my hair.
“All I’m saying is you could do something different,” he said, flopping onto his back. I swallowed, not knowing what that would be but realizing that he was right. I could do something else.
As I lay there my old dream of going to school started to resurface. I pictured myself walking to classes in cute new clothes, a bag slung over my shoulder, talking to my friends as we walked to class. “I thought I might go to school. Maybe for art or psychology,” I whispered, afraid of it, worried about what he might say. I held my breath as I waited for his reply.
