Phantom Angel Read Online Free PDF Page B

itsy. No more than five-feet-three.”
    â€œDid she mention who she’d been studying with?”
    Vicki shook her head. There was, I noticed, ketchup in her uncombed black hair. A lot of ketchup.
    â€œHow did she hear about the audition?”
    â€œHow do any of you people hear about auditions? The word gets out. Before there was Facebook there were actors.”
    â€œVicki, do you have a current phone number for her? The one I’ve got is no longer in service.”
    â€œI don’t have a thing, Benji. And now I have to throw you out.”
    â€œYou’re the best, Vicki.”
    â€œDamned straight I am.” As I started for the door, Vicki added, “She came to the audition with a guy—tall, handsome, shoulders out to here.”
    â€œDid he have a British accent?”
    She frowned at me. “Why would he have a British accent?”
    â€œAny idea who he was?”
    â€œI know exactly who he was,” she replied. “Farmer John.”
    â€œWho’s Farmer John?”
    â€œYou know him.”
    â€œI do?”
    â€œHe’s famous.”
    â€œHe is?”
    â€œYeah, he’s been on the news a bunch of times. He’s that Park Avenue do-gooder who converted a bunch of abandoned lots in Brownsville into an urban vegetable farm. And, God, what a hunk. Him I could cast in two seconds flat. But the man’s not interested. Too busy saving humanity.” Vicki Arduino paused to devour a greasy French fry. “One mouthful at a time.”
    *   *   *
    AS I RODE THE NO. 3 TRAIN out to the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, I listened to the original Broadway cast recording of Annie Get Your Gun on my iPod and used my laptop to read up on Farmer John, which is to say John Mason Granger III, age twenty-four. There was a whole lot of news coverage about him. He was an All-American rich kid—the only son of John Mason Granger, Jr., managing partner of Granger and Haynes, the big money Wall Street law firm. And he’d been a straight-A student at Yale until he dropped out in the middle of his senior year to launch the Farm Project, an eight-thousand-square-foot urban farm that he’d dug out of the weeds and broken glass in one of the city’s most blighted neighborhoods. It hadn’t been easy. He’d had to convince the city to grant him the use of the neglected vacant lots. And to run water to them from the water main under the street. That had cost money. So had things like sturdy chain-link fencing, lumber and tons and tons of topsoil and mulch. He’d raised most of the twenty-four thousand dollars that he’d needed from small investors online via Kickstarter. Then rounded up volunteers with strong backs to help him. And enlisted the teachers at the neighboring elementary school, PS 323, to embrace the farm as a so-called Edible Schoolyard where the neighborhood kids could learn about science, math and nutrition by planting seeds, watching them grow and feasting on the fruits of their labors. It had proven to be such a resounding success that it was now a model for future urban farms all across America.
    It was on the corner of Rockaway Avenue and Sutter Avenue, across the street from a Laundromat and a bodega. A hand-lettered sign on the open front gate read: Welcome to the Edible Schoolyard .
    It was startlingly green there. The planting beds were bursting with ripe tomatoes, string beans, eggplants and squashes. It was also bustling. There had to be forty kids and grown-ups harvesting and weeding despite the scorching heat. Nearly all were people of color, with the exception of a handful of volunteers who wore bright green I VOLUNTEERED T-shirts. Teenaged boys and girls were clustered together on benches, chattering away. A laughing little boy stuck a fresh-picked cherry tomato down the back of a little girl’s T-shirt and took off running. She let out a shriek and went chasing after him.
    Farmer John was not