1 Breakfast at Madeline's by Matt Witten Read Free Book Online

to act casual, afraid that if I jumped up and down with joy Judy might get second thoughts. "Free coffee, huh? I didn't know that."
    "Sure, Mayor's orders. Cup of Ethiopian."
    Weird. "You have any idea why he was so into Ethiopian?"
    "Maybe he owned stock. So when you gonna get me Penn's stuff?"
    As soon as I can cut and paste together a couple of pages that don't sound like the man was totally insane. "As soon as I can. He wrote so much terrific material, I'll have to, you know, pick out the best."
    "Just give me the whole shebang. I'm the editor, I'll edit."
    First Rob, now Judy. Nice of everyone to be so darn helpful. But no way was I going to let Judy Demarest find out that Penn's enti re oeuvre consisted of ten tril lion versions of a one-page preface. Two pages at most. "No, the handwriting's, like, totally illegible."
    "Not for me. Why I became an editor. Never yet met handwriting I couldn't handle."
    I smiled but held my ground. "Thanks, I'm happy to just do it myself."
    "Look, it'll be quicker if I do it. Guy died two days ago, I gotta get this in the paper by Sunday at the lat est."
    "I'll give it to you before then."
    Judy argued for a while longer, but finally shrugged her shoulders and gave up.
    "So," she said, "guy was a diamond in the rough, huh?"
    I gave a knowing nod.
    "You could say that," I answered.

7
     
    "You did what?!" Andrea screeched, her voice rising. It was several hours later. The kids were in the backyard playing while Andrea and I fixed dinner; I hoped they couldn't hear us fighting. "You robbed a safety-deposit vault? Isn't that, like, a federal crime?"
    "Honey, I had to. It was the only way I could get in." I'd already decided to leave out the part about the scree-eeks, so I added, "There was no risk at all. I was in and out of there in about two seconds."
    Andrea pointed a chopping knife at me. "What is the matter with you? You're wacko! You hardly even knew this guy, and now you risk going to jail for him?!"
    I kept right on setting the table, playing nonchalant. "I'm telling you, it was no big deal. Besides, even if they caught me, they wouldn't have done anything—"
    Andrea grabbed the plates out of my hand and stared me down. "Don't you ever do something like that again without talking to me first! You've got a wife and two kids, you can't act like this!"
    I sighed. "Okay, okay, d on't worry. No more funny stuff. "
    "There's nothing funny about it."
    Dinner that night was a decidedly tense experience. Even the eggplant parmesan, usually one of my faves, tasted flavorless somehow. Babe Ruth spent the entire meal loudly complaining that in his T-ball league, you're not allowed to get doubles or triples or homers, only singles. "I could get a homer every time, if they let me!" he declared.
    It's true: The Babe is a darn good little baseball player. We're happy about that, because he's shown signs of being intellectually gifted—he can already add and subtract better than most politicians—and we figure the baseball play ing will help keep him well bal anced. Also, he seems to have inherited some of my sensitive artiste tendencies, and exercise is the best way for guys like us to mellow out.
    But Andrea and I w eren't in the mood to talk base ball with the Babe that night. On top of being angry at me, Andrea got mad at Gretzky for his hockey-players- don't-make-peepee routine, which was showing no signs of abating. Meanwhile, I was still preoccupied with how I was going to put together a good version of The Penn's preface for the newspaper.
    So later that night, as I set Penn's magnum opus down on my bedside table and lay back in bed watch ing Andrea undress, I still felt a residue of our earlier quarrel. Which was unfortunate, because lying back in bed watching Andrea undress was usually one of my favorite pastimes. To hell with Marcie. Like Paul New man says, Why go out for hamburger when you can have steak at home? Right now Andrea was shaking her hair free from her barrette. I began to