The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault Read Free Book Online Page A

story collection.”
    Mona shook her head, frowning.
    “How’d you find this?” I asked.
    “It was in one of my sets of cits for the
Supplement
.”
    “Wow. That’s creepy.”
    “Yeah. There must be a lot of these around, is what I’m thinking.”
    “Mona.” I lowered my voice.
    “Yes?”
    “Do you want to maybe talk about this after work today? We could get a beer or something.”
    “I don’t drink beer.”
    “Coffee, then.”
    “Okay. How about Friendly’s on Carpenter Street?”
    The suggestion surprised me. I hadn’t been to a Friendly’s since I was a kid.
    “Cool,” I said.
    • • •
    “I think I’m going to get ice cream.” Mona was studying the menu through her squarish glasses. “What about you?”
    “Just coffee, I think.”
    “That’s too bad. I don’t like to get ice cream by myself.”
    “Why not? You shouldn’t feel guilty. You don’t look like someone who needs to worry about calories.”
    Mona sighed. “So charming, Billy. No wonder Anna’s already in love with you. ‘That new boy is such a gentleman. So
personable.’
”
    “She said that? I just say hello.”
    “That’s all it takes at Samuelson. But anyway. What I meant about ice cream is that it’s a communal kind of pleasure, don’t you think? Everybody piles into the station wagon when Dad’s in a good mood after work … drive out to the Dairy Queen and get cones together. It’s really not about the ice cream per se.”
    “Is that how it is in your family?”
    “Well, no. Not exactly. But you get the idea. Ice cream is celebratory. It’s a special occasion. Eating it by yourself is a little like drinking by yourself. It’s base.”
    “Maybe I’ll get some ice cream, then. If that’s how you feel about it. Are we celebrating something?”
    “No.” Mona pulled two citations out of her bag:
editrix
and
blow-dryer
. “We’re investigating. Someone’s fucking around in the cit file.”
    “Or maybe someone
was
fucking around in the cit file. In the mid-eighties.”
    “Sure. The cits are both dated 1985. But everything else on them is bogus. The date’s probably bogus too.”
    “So if they’re made up, what do you think’s the point? What’s it about?”
    “Maybe a personal vendetta between editors? A bizarrepsychological game of some kind? All those silent types we have at Samuelson—there’s gotta be a sociopath or two among us. Or at least a few passive-aggressive types.”
    A waitress took our orders. Mona asked for a sundae with hot fudge, peanut butter sauce, two different kinds of ice cream, and “no cherry.” I got a dish of rainbow sherbet.
    Mona scoffed at my order. “Rainbow sherbet, Billy? Are you some kind of pansy?”
    “No, I’m just not very hungry.”
    “Right. Whatever. So we both agree that the first cit definitely sounds like it’s happening at a dictionary’s editorial office. Probably ours. Now, in the second one, there’s something very dramatic happening. She’s sobbing, making a desperate phone call. Did you
read
this thing?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “
‘He couldn’t save me from anything.’
What did she want to be rescued from?”
    “That’s one thing I already hate about defining. You only get to read little bits of things. You never get to hear what happens next.”
    “This might be a vendetta. Or a trick. But maybe it’s a cry for help.”
    “I hope not,” I said. “I can’t think of anything more boring.”
    Mona put down the white slip and rested her pointy chin in her hand.
    “This might not seem interesting now,” she said. “But trust me. Stuff like this doesn’t come up every day at Samuelson. Spend a few weeks triple-proofreading dictionary copy for typesetter’s colon errors, and then you’ll understand how interesting this really is. You’re definitely gonna thank me for involving you in this. Someday.”
    “I’m thanking you already. Thank you for letting me inon the second wacky cit. It was truly the most interesting thing that