| |
Monday September 30th, 9:00 a.m.
On the way to the library, my cell phone rang. My heart started to pound. Allison?
“Hello?”
It was Bob Chamberlain. “Love, where are you?”
I had to think fast. “Uh, just working at home today, Bob. Plus, I have to do some research at the library. You know, to keep the Steven columns fresh.”
Bob’s tone was conciliatory. “Hey now, I wasn’t coming down on you about working at home. You’re a pro, so where you work is your decision, as long as your columns meet deadline, right? Say, you haven’t finished Wednesday’s yet, have you?”
“Bob, it’s Monday. There’s lots of time yet.”
“Oh, of course, of course. Just asking. Hey, you’re a valuable member of this team, boy-o. Just checking to see that you’re doing OK.” Bob was working very hard to sound jovial.
Suspicious, I took the bull by the horns. “Bob, are you afraid that I’m cracking up or something? Because I’m not. You’ll get your columns, and they’ll be great.”
Now Bob’s tone was almost avuncular. “Well, now that you mention it, I was just a bit concerned about you. You seem ... a bit stressed out—understandably, no doubt, but maybe you need to talk to someone about things.” Realizing that this was not macho-talk, Bob back-pedalled a bit. “Not a shrink, of course. That flaky crap—sheeeeesh. But, uh, a friend or your minister or something. Are you getting enough sleep?”
This kindly advice from Bob was too much. “Bob, please just stay out of my business.” I felt pathetic.
“Well, anyway,” he said cheerfully, “wait’ll you see your next paycheque.”
“Why?”
“Your syndication royalties are through the roof! We just sold your column to the Washington Post. You’ll be paid an extra grand per week, on top of another three grand from the sale to the New York Times. How’s that, eh? Feeling better?”
A little glimmer of hope sprang to life in my mind. Maybe the monstrous debt that I was in could be handled, after all. And if I could pay off the debt, or at least show her that I was paying it off, maybe Allison would come home.
“You’ve got to keep it coming, Donny. This paper hasn’t seen this kind of excitement since the Evelyn Dick story.” It had been a sordid tale of a wife who was accused of sawing the head and limbs from her husband’s dead body and attempting to burn them in her furnace to hide the evidence.
“Bob, I can’t write the column forever. It doesn’t have much staying power. It’s a story about an old high school friend. His story is almost over.”
How could I refuse to bullshit some more on my bullshit?
“Well then, bullshit it. What’s Steven up to next?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“C’mon, spill.”
“I’ve got to go now, Bob,” I said. “Back to my research. I’ll e-mail Wednesday’s stuff to you from home as soon as it’s done.”
Reluctantly, Bob let me hang up. I hopped in the car to go meet Reingruber at the library. Our local branch had been built in the Sixties and had that ugly architecture that had seemed so wonderfully forward-thinking back then. However, it was part of a top-notch library system in Hamilton. We had everything any big city library had, and especially in the computer area.
Reingruber was already there, hovering around the Reference Librarian’s desk. He had a shoddy-looking shoulder bag with him, stuffed to the brim with God knows what. Norbert did have a habit of carrying all sorts of odds and sods around with him. When we were fifteen, we missed the last bus home from downtown one cold February night, and we were dreading the hour-long walk home and the groundings that would inevitably follow. As we groused and trudged, Reingruber pulled a huge harmonica out of his bag and began to serenade us. He wasn’t all that good, but we could sort of make out the theme from Hawaii Five-O. We could barely walk for laughing. It almost made the whole disaster worthwhile.
There was something odder than usual about Reingruber’s behaviour today. As I arrived at the desk, it became clearer. The Reference Librarian today was a red-haired, sweet-faced woman. She was wearing an Aquaman T-shirt, and she and Reingruber were engrossed in what appeared to be a discussion of the drawbacks of having superpowers that only worked in water. I had never seen Reingruber talk to a woman before, unless you counted him placing orders for lunch with waitresses or his mother. I had to practically drag him over to a computer so that we could get started. What finally focussed him was the assistance of our Reference Librarian, Morag.
She knew her stuff. Without giving away everything, we told her that we had to find an old high school friend fast, but that just Googling his name would give us far too many results to sift through. Before long, she had us narrowing our search and expertly checking databases of all kinds. We found seven different people named Steven McCartney, but none of them looked promising. Still, we wrote down the phone numbers and decided to head back to my house to make the calls.
Reingruber avoided making eye contact with me as we drove home, and I knew why. I had seen Miss Morag conspiratorially hand Norbert a piece of paper before we left, and I knew what it was.
Reingruber had finally gotten a girl’s phone number.
