Doc in the Box by Elaine Viets Read Free Book Online

Advertisers found that so upsetting. Instead, the paper would discuss what a fine future the city would have if we all pulled together. Public journalism turned a newspaper into a Miss Manners’ dinner party. Unsettling topics such as deadbeat dads, killer kids, and alcoholic moms would not be polite. So they were never mentioned in any Dialog St. Louis.
    Its appeal to management was immediate: public journalism was cheap and noncontroversial. It was also shallow and stupid, and
Gazette
readers, at least those old enough to remember its glory days when it was one of the first papers to fight against the Vietnam War, resented this drivel. The last Dialog St. Louis was “The Importance of Teaching Phonics.” Another featured this controversial subject: “Should St. Louis Parks Have Separate Paths for Bikers and Bladers?”
    The
Weekly Reader
was more controversial.Smarter, too. And it had more circulation. Charlie failed to realize public journalism was practiced by Podunk papers. I’d do anything to keep my name from appearing on that page of pablum. Even find a recipe. But I wasn’t lying to Charlie. I didn’t cook. Some would say I didn’t even eat. Breakfast was usually a scrambled egg and toast at Uncle Bob’s. Lunch was something pale and gray out of a
Gazette
sandwich machine. I ate well if I went out for dinner, but I did that less and less since I’d split with Lyle. Instead, I’d stop for pork fried rice or order up a pepperoni pizza. Maybe I could publish “Francesca’s Top Five Food Delivery Phone Numbers.” Sometimes, I just opened a can of tuna and ate it over the sink, or dredged pretzels through peanut butter. Wouldn’t that make a
Martha Stewart Living
layout?
    If my grandmother were alive, I wouldn’t have this problem. She was a superb cook. Of course, she never used recipes. She never even measured. She’d take a handful of flour or sugar, a lump of butter, a pinch of salt, or a dash of vanilla and whip up the best pies, cakes, and biscuits. I tried to watch and duplicate what she did, but I never could. I guess my hands weren’t the right size. Once I asked her for her recipe for biscuits. Her scratch biscuits were like fresh-baked clouds, light, fluffy, and warm. She handed me a box of Bisquick and said, “Don’t waste your time. Here’s your old family recipe.” I followed the directions on the box and made something that tasted like crunchy hockey pucks.
    Where was I going to find a St. Louis recipe? I grew up in the old German section, but strudel or sauerkraut were beyond me. I certainly couldn’t whipup something French as a tribute to our earliest settlers, or make collards and cornbread to honor our black population. A stove was foreign territory. I had till tomorrow to think of something, or I was condemned to serve on that mindless Dialog St. Louis page.
    Well, I’d think of some way out. I’d been at the paper less than half an hour and managed to get myself in trouble. It was ten-forty, time to pick up Georgia. I told Scarlette the department secretary that I was at the library doing research. That was the
Gazette
code for ducking out of the office. Once I actually ran into another reporter at the downtown library and we were both really doing research. It was very embarrassing.
    I blinked in the strong sunlight when I stepped outside the
Gazette
building. It was one of those heartbreakingly beautiful spring days. The trees were that tender yellow green you see only in spring. The white dogwoods were lush, romantic drifts of pearly petals. The pink dogwoods were like cotton candy. Even the dandelions looked perky on the fresh green lawns. I wondered why they were branded as weeds. I liked dandelions. There was still enough cold air under the warm spring day to remind you that a sudden cold snap could take everything away. I shivered. I didn’t need any reminders. Not when I was taking Georgia to buy a wig.
    When I picked her up in front of her building, she seemed