White Collar Girl Read Online Free PDF

had a cousin once who had a nervous breakdown and they gave her electric shock. She was never quite right after that. She couldn’t remember to do things like turn off the stove or the faucet in the bathtub.”
    â€œI wonder if he’ll come back to work,” said Peter.
    Walter was ready with another wager. He bet five bucks that Marty wouldn’t. Henry said he would.
    Mr. Ellsworth snapped and told them to knock it off. “Marty Sinclair’s one of the best goddamned reporters I’ve ever worked with. Even with a bolt of electricity shooting through his skull, he could still write circles around any of you.” He looked at Walter as he said this.
    That resulted in another lull in the conversation, but thanks to Randy, I still had that Winston cigarette jingle playing inside my head. I couldn’t shake it, the words and melody looping through my mind.
    Gradually the guys started talking again, changing the subject, going on about other things, more comfortable topics. It was almost seven thirty, and by then Benny, M, Gabby and some of the others had already left. No one was talking to me, so I finished my drink, collected my newspapers and said my good-byes. The men didn’t break from their conversation when I was leaving.
    â€œSee you all in the morning,” I said anyway, speaking to the air.
    It was only Peter who looked over and said, “
Ehhhx-
cellent.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    I still lived at home with my parents in Old Town, and on a salary of sixty dollars a week it would be a while before I could afford a place of my own.
    I took a shortcut and came up the back way, slipping through the fence. I walked up the pathway, aware of my mother’s missing flower beds. Normally by now her tulips and crocuses would be in bloom. But it had been two years since she’d planted any flowers. She’d lost her passion for gardening and had let her flowers perish after her son died. Since then my father had built the fallout shelter where the flower beds once stood. I drew closer and saw the shelter handle poking up from the grass. It was attached to something that looked like a garbage can lid. I’d been down in the shelter only once, and that was to help my father load it up with canned goods and powdered milk. It was dank and musty, but it could sleep three adults and even had a toilet. If the Russians were coming, my father would be ready.
    I went around the pathway to the front of the house. The porch lights were on, guiding my way up the stairs. I was warm, perspiring from the walk home, and I noticed that the ink from thenewspapers tucked beneath my arm had bled onto my jacket. I was hoping I hadn’t ruined it as I fished inside my handbag for the keys. Our house was an old Victorian Painted Lady, pale blue and gray with a dusty rose trim. It looked like a dollhouse, but there was a stark contrast between the outside and the inside.
    It was dark when I entered the foyer except for the wedge of light coming from the living room, running a triangle across the hardwood floor. I smelled Lucky Strikes in the air and that faint stale scent that comes from a house filled with books. My parents were voracious readers and had long since run out of space on their shelves, so now the overflow was stacked on tables and on the floor in the hallway, teetering in piles that stood here and there, crooked spines three and four feet high.
    In the distance I heard the
tap, tap, clack, clack
coming from my father’s typewriter in his office at the back of the house, off the kitchen. As I expected, my mother was in her chair in the living room. She had a book in her hand; another one spread facedown, hanging over the lace-doilied arm of her recliner. Dust motes swam in the light above her shoulder.
    â€œYou’re home,” she said, using her index finger to mark her place in the book. “How was it?” She reached for her glass, leaving a circle