A Farewell to Legs Read Online Free PDF Page B

a
screw-up.”
    “Don’t mince words, Lydia. Come right out and say
it.”
    She chuckled. “Aaron, have you ever been a magazine
editor?”
    “Not on your level, no.”
    “One of the things you have to rely on is your own
instinct. I called you because Stephanie recommended you. I did it
because she’s a friend, and because her cooperation is going to be
central to a story that everybody who covers politics is going to
want. We’re tired of being thought of as Rolling Stone ’s
slow-witted cousin, and we want to make a big splash. She’s giving
you exclusive access to her, and ‘exclusive’ means exclusive . She isn’t talking to anybody else. Also, I read
as many of your clips as I could get off the Web. But still, I
wouldn’t offer you the story if I called you and you sounded like
you were going to read through the police reports on the Internet
and write a story about the extinguishing of a strong voice for the
fundamentalist right on Capitol Hill. Frankly, I thought Louis
Gibson was. . .”
    “. . . An asshole?”
    “Pretty much.”
    “He certainly was one in high school, and I haven’t
seen him since then, but I’m willing to bet he got worse. Am I
allowed to write that he was an asshole?”
    Lydia didn’t miss a beat. “If you can back it up
with facts, sure.”
    “Well, stop beating around the bush,” I said. “Ask
me if I want the ten grand.”

Chapter

Seven
    M onday morning was the
usual blur of sandwiches made and bagged, drink boxes, water
bottles, snacks and apples placed in lunch bags and boxes, clothing
located, teeth brushed, cereal poured, medication dispensed (Ethan
gets 15 milligrams of Ritalin every morning), hugs, kisses, hair
brushed, shoes lost, shoes found, more hugs, and pushing the kids
out the front door. All before eight in the morning.
    I had an assignment from the Newark
Star-Ledger about new video products sold in New Jersey. I work
quite frequently for the Star-Ledger ’s “Today” section,
which concerns itself with lighter, feature material. Travel,
parenting, consumer issues, that sort of thing. In this case, the
section was about advances in video technology (there hadn’t been
any lately, so I was making it up), and I’d been given a list of
four people the paper would like me to interview. I had reached
two, and needed to make a visible effort at the other two before
writing. The deadline was Wednesday, today was Monday, so I assumed
this would be no problem.
    Still, it was only eight in the morning, and you
can’t count on anyone being in their office before nine, so I
started my day, as I usually do, with the New York Times crossword puzzle. I make a big show, when asked, about how it helps
me to think about words and increases my vocabulary, but the fact
is the puzzle is a good way to kill time and postpone having to do
anything that approaches work. Does it improve my vocabulary and
get me thinking about words? Sure. Does that make even a
one-percent difference in what I would write about video technology
for “Today”? Get real.
    So, I was attempting to find a six-letter word for
“dummies,” and failing miserably, when the phone rang. Our newly
installed Caller ID box informed me that the incoming call was from
the Buzbee School main office, and at 8:30 a.m., that is never good
news.
    I’m used to getting calls from the school. Ethan
suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder like a
high-functioning form of autism, which manifests itself in many
ways, almost all of them socially unacceptable, or at least odd.
The school calls often, if just to let me know when he’s having a
rough day. A paraprofessional named Wilma Coogan follows him around
all day, and will frequently call me with a question, or when a
situation arises she hasn’t seen before. So I breathed a long sigh
to gird myself for what was clearly going to be a rough day.
    “Hi, Aaron, it’s Anne Mignano.” Uh-oh. The principal
herself. Now I was really in