Bigfoot Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

against the smooth cotton, Vera presses her forehead into those tropical beaches and red sunsets and wishes she could stay there forever.
    On the wall behind him is a framed print that looks like a photo of exploding dust, which Solomon claims is the only known shot of his kneecap disappearing at Khe Sanh. Whether or not he has it on film, there’s no denying the lemon-sized depression where his right knee should be; the rest of him seems slightly drawn, as if flesh and sinew and something less tangible has gone into healing it. Now as he runs for the phone, cameras bang together around his neck; his bad leg follows, bouncy and dogged as a younger kid keeping up.
    “Who’s this?” he yells into the phone. “Pete? Solomon. Listen, can you do me a favor and stop by in a couple minutes and kill a nun? Great.” He laughs and hangs up.
    “ SINGING NUN HITS SOUR NOTE ?” says Vera.
    “Close,” says Solomon. “ SADO SLASHER STRIKES SEMINARY SISTER . One of Mavis’s masterpieces.”
    “ SICKO SHUTTERBUG SHOOTS SELF STABBING SISTER ,” Vera says.
    “You got it,” he says. “What’s up?”
    “Not me,” Vera says. “We’re in for it now. Didn’t Carmen tell you?”
    “ We ?”
    “Someone’s suing the paper.” It sounds so right, Vera nearly forgets it’s just a guess. “Over one of our stories.”
    Solomon grabs Vera’s shoulders and backs her against the wall. “You know what we do to guys who bring bad news?” he says. Then he lets her go and grins. “Are you serious? Every crank with a dime to call a lawyer has sued us fifty times.”
    “This one’s had Dan and Frank at their lawyer’s all morning.”
    Solomon scratches the back of his neck. “Then it’s a rich crank with fifty cents for a fancy lawyer.”
    “We’re supposed to see them after lunch,” Vera says. “I’m going to the morgue to read back and see what I can figure out.”
    “Needle-in-a-haystack time,” says Solomon. Then he takes Vera’s hands between his and says, “All right, I’ll make you a deal. If it turns out to be nothing, I’ll buy you dinner Saturday.”
    “And if it turns out to be something?”
    “I’ll buy you dinner Saturday to cheer us up.”
    Vera thinks she has reasons for not wanting to go, but before she can think of one, she sees the little nun, lounging in the doorway, sullen and wary as a high-school girl waiting for the teacher to pass so she can light up. Vera wishes she could, too; the time it would take to light a smoke is exactly the interval she needs to exit with anything approaching grace.
    Leaving Solomon’s, the first office Vera passes is Tom Dreier’s. Tom Dreier—of the shiny suits, the three-strand-over-the-bald-spot pervert hair, the ubiquitous briefcase that Vera imagines containing handcuffs and rubber restraints for lunchtime assignations—writes the regular columns that appear near the back of the paper: “Ask Your Doctor,” “You and Your Teenager,” and the most popular, “Take That!” (“You know what I think about the ERA? I think those bra-burners would still be beating their laundry against the rocks if some MAN hadn’t invented the washing machine for them! Take that!”) According to the latest This Week readers’ poll, more people than Vera wants to believe buy the paper just for “Take That!” ’s responsible, hard-hitting journalism.
    Next door to Tom is Mort Baird, a pleasant little recluse whose office has a certain entertainment value because of the illustrations he draws for every article he writes. The art is primitive, childlike, unprintable. But without it, Mort claims, he can’t work. Vera’s favorite is his drawing for GOD GAVE ME FIVE BLIND BABIES —a stick figure Mom with five tiny bundles, each wearing infant-size sunglasses. Visiting Mort reminds Vera of first dates with shy guys who took you to museums. You looked at the pictures while they stood there watching you look; then you both stood there.
    Continuing down the hall, Vera almost