Dakota by Gwen Florio Read Free Book Online

bothered her, as apparently was the case at the moment, she chewed on the end. On the rare occasions when she undid the braid, her hair cascaded around her face in chorus-girl waves that caught the light and held it. Lola thought, not for the first time, that it seemed to be her own fate to be the pretty girl’s gawky friend; everything about Lola herself too by comparison—jaw too strong, shoulders too broad, chest too flat, butt too skinny. Mary Alice had been tiny and blond and distractingly rounded; with Jan, there was the added insult of her youth and ranch-girl fitness, the shoulders-back, light-on-her-feet stance that casually proclaimed her ability and eagerness to kick some ass.
    Jan wrapped the braid around her neck and pulled tight, sliding down in her chair. “Better get ready to hire another reporter, Jorkki,” she choked out. “I’m going to kill myself out of despair for the stupidity that surrounds me.” One pointy-toed boot thudded onto the execrable carpet, followed by its partner as she sat up. Jan wore her cowboy boots throughout the winter, somehow retaining her slick-soled footing even on Magpie’s icy streets. She hammered at her keyboard and read Lola the results. “Four hundred seventy miles, depending on where you’re going once you get there. This time of year, allowing for weather, better count on ten hours minimum. Maybe more.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why the interest in the patch? Isn’t that a few hundred miles outside your territory? Or maybe you’ve decided to go to work there?” She feigned—maybe—a hopeful tone. “You could make twice as much slinging ten-dollar burgers for greenhorns and roustabouts as you could working here.”
    “Knock it off, Jan,” Jorkki rasped. He didn’t smoke, but to Lola he always sounded like he was on his tenth cigarette of the day. “The last thing you need is for Lola to leave. Your work has gotten about one hundred percent better since she got here. Besides, who’d you pal around with after work if she were gone? I figure the two of you are like checks and balances, keeping each other more or less in line.”
    Pleasure and indignation fought one another to a draw across Jan’s features. “I thought it was your job to make me better. Not hers.”
    “Way I see it, you watch what she does and then you do the same thing. My job gets easier as a result. It’s a win-win.” He threw Jan a bone. “Pretty soon, you’ll be giving Lola a run for her money.”
    Finch spoke up. “I’d pay to watch that.”
    “Shut up, Finch.” Something Jan said to Finch several times a day.
    Lola returned to her desk. She and Jan sat next to each other, facing Jorkki, whose sole form of exercise, as far as Lola could tell, involved bobbing from one side of his chair to the other, peering around his computer monitor to see which of them was available to do his bidding. Sometimes he turned to Tina Kicking Woman, who came by after school to help Finch with obituaries and the occasional feature story on the days when Jorkki was either feeling magnanimous or desperate. Tina made a space for herself and her secondhand laptop at the long table at the back of the room where the newspapers were stacked according to week. That gave her the advantage of turning her back on Finch, who beamed moistly whenever she made the mistake of glancing his way. She hunched over her laptop, but Lola could tell by the way her fingers stilled on the keyboard that she was eavesdropping.
    “I thought I might head out to the patch for a story,” Lola said.
    Jorkki raised his head an inch. “Oh? Jan, I expected that autopsy story an hour ago.”
    Jan hit a couple of keys. “There. It’s all yours. But it’s just the coroner’s initial report. The autopsy results will take at least a couple of weeks.”
    “If it was done, why didn’t you send it to me?”
    “Because I like watching you break into a sweat. It’s good for that delicate Finnish complexion. Look at Finch. Soon