Deadline by Gerry Boyle Read Free Book Online Page B

likes baseball?”
    Most of the hands went up.
    â€œWell, it’s sort of like in baseball where you’re on a high-school or college team. Then Single A. Then Double A. Then Triple A and the majors. If you’re good enough. Newspapers are like that for a lot of people. They want to keep moving up from little papers to bigger and bigger ones until they get to places like the New York Times or the Washington Post or maybe a magazine. Time or Newsweek or one of those. But it takes a few years to get that far. And some people never do.”
    The same kid raised his hand, the little brat. I glanced at the teacher to see if he would tell the kid to let somebody else ask aquestion, a nice simple question, but the teacher looked like he was enjoying himself.
    Why teach long division when you can see the newspaper guy interrogated by the KGB?
    â€œSo why did you go from the—what is it?—the New York Times to the Review? ” my nemesis asked, looking me straight in the eye. “Isn’t that, like, sort of going backwards?”
    The little bugger.
    â€œWho is this guy?” I asked, giving him a big grin and biding for time as the real answer raced through my head.
    I left because I wasn’t the best. I could tell him that. I could tell him about the younger reporters getting the choice stuff, the investigative stuff, the foreign stuff, the bureau chief jobs. But I didn’t.
    â€œI needed a change,” I said, as the teacher seemed to listen more closely. “New York can wear you out. And I like the people here. When I came up to do a story on the paper here, the people were so nice I decided to come back.”
    There was a moment’s pause, then another question, this time from one of two smirking dark-haired girls.
    â€œAre you married?” one blurted out.
    â€œShe thinks you’re cute,” the other one said.
    â€œCrystal!” the first girl said, and everybody whooped. I waited for the teacher to step in and referee but he still hung back. Not somebody you wanted with you in a foxhole.
    â€œAm I married? You sure you guys haven’t been reporters? I’m gonna hire you to work for me. No, I’m not married. Never have been.”
    â€œYou have a girlfriend?” Crystal asked, while her friend giggled.
    â€œDo I have a girlfriend? Boy, you don’t give up, do you. Well, I do have someone that is sort of my girlfriend. Sort of.”
    â€œIs she pretty?”
    God, man, I thought. You gonna let these kids dissect me or what?
    â€œYeah, she’s pretty,” I said. “Sort of like you.”
    More whoops, boys snorting.
    â€œWhat’s your girlfriend’s name?” Crystal called out over the din.
    They quieted down to listen, the little buggers.
    â€œRoxanne,” I said. “She lives in Portland. Only she might not be my girlfriend. Not like you think. We’ve only gone on a couple dates.”
    Both of which ended in bed, I thought.
    I tried not to think about it, not up there in front of the kids. Roxanne smiling at me and shaking my hand, when we met at a party at the home of a guy I had known back in Providence who had moved to Portland and the Press Herald . The guy was a photographer who liked sailing the Maine coast and filled his house with beautiful kids and, on that night, beautiful people. One was Roxanne, and I could still see that look she gave me as we met, a look that went right through me, warm and open, as if she’d known me for years, as if she knew everything about me.
    We’d talked and gone out late for a drink and more talk and then we’d climbed in her little yellow Subaru and gone to her apartment in an old brick building on the chic Western Promenade, where we did not talk much at all.
    So I could tell the kids that. I could say she was a social worker who worked with kids like some of them, that she was young and bright and great-looking, with long dark hair, and that making love