And Now the News by Theodore Sturgeon Read Free Book Online

vigor.
    â€œAll right, then I won’t be home for dinner,” he said reasonably.
    She didn’t say anything for a long time, but he knew she was still there. He sat and waited. At last she said faintly, “Will veal cutlets be all right?”
    On the second night after this fledging, Mr. Joseph Fritch strode into the porte-cochere and bounded up the steps. He ground the bell-push with his thumb until it hurt, and then knocked. He stood very straight until the door opened.
    â€œJoe, boy! Come on in.” Zeitgeist left the door and opened another. Joe had the choice of following or of standing where he was and shouting. He followed. He found himself in a room new to him, low-ceilinged like the others, but with books from floor to ceiling. In a massive fieldstone fireplace flames leaped cheerfully, yet the room was quite cool. Air-conditioned. Well, he guessed Zeitgeist just
liked
a fire. “Look,” he said abruptly.
    â€œSit down. Drink?”
    â€œNo. Listen, you’ve made a mistake.”
    â€œI know, I know. The bill. Got it with you?”
    â€œI have.”
    Zeitgeist nodded approvingly. Joe caught himself wondering why. Zeitgeist glided across to him and pressed a tall glass into his hand. It was frosty, beaded, sparkling. “What’s in it?” he snapped.
    Zeitgeist burst out laughing, and in Joe fury passed, shame passed, and he found himself laughing, too. He held out his glass and Zeitgeist clinked with him. “You’re a … a—luck.”
    â€œLuck,” said Zeitgeist. They drank. It was whiskey, the old gentle muscular whiskey that lines the throat with velvet and instantly heats the ear lobes. “How did you make out?”
    Joe drank again and smiled. “I walked into that office almost an hour late,” he began, and told what had happened. Then, “And all day it was like that. I didn’t know a job … people … I didn’t know things could be like that. Look, I told you I’d pay you. I said I’d pay you anything you—”
    â€œNever mind that just now. What else happened? The suit and all?”
    â€œThat. Oh, I guess I was kind of—” Joe looked into the friendly amber in his glass, “well, intoxicated. Lunchtime I just walked into King’s and got the suit. Two suits. I haven’t had a new suit in four years, and then it didn’t come from King’s. I just signed for ’em,” he added, a reflective wonderment creeping into his voice. “They didn’t mind. Shirts,” he said, closing his eyes.
    â€œIt’ll pay off.”
    â€œIt did pay off,” said Joe, bouncing on his soft chair to sit upright on the edge, shoulders back, head up. His voice drummed and his eyes were bright. He set his glass down on the carpet and swatted his hands gleefully together. “There was this liaison meeting, they call it, this morning. I don’t know what got into me. Well, I do; but anyway, like every other copywriter I have a project tucked away; you know—I like it but maybe no one else will. I had it in my own roughs, up to yesterday. So I got this bee in my bonnet and went in to the Art Department and started in on them, and you know, they caught fire, they worked almost all
night?
And at the meeting this morning, the usual once-a-month kind of thing, the brass from the main office looking over us step-children and wondering why they don’t fold us up and go to an outside agency. It was so easy!” he chortled.
    â€œI just sat there, shy like always, and there was old Barnes as usual trying to head off product advertising and go into institutionals, because he likes to write that stuff himself. Thinks it makes the brass think he loves the company. So soon as he said ‘institutionals’ I jumped up and agreed with him and said let me show you one of Mr. Barnes’ ideas. Yeah! I went and got it and you should
see
that