The Eggnog Chronicles by Carly Alexander Read Free Book Online Page A

international cuisine and food preparation. Then there’s the matter of sampling nearly everything on the menu.” He patted down his pockets. “I’m fishing for my Tums just thinking about it.”
    â€œWho’s in line?” I asked him.
    He tapped on the glass of the tank. “It’s a tad early to speculate, but Genevieve is speaking to Martin at the moment.”
    Genevieve! No, not her! No one was less deserving. The guy with the sandwich cart had a better handle on food than Genevieve Smythe. I had to move fast if I wanted to save face. Not that food editor was the perfect job for me, but at this point I needed to block the enemy. Defensive maneuvers. I needed a plan in place when Marty’s office door swung open.
    â€œThanks, Ed,” I said, hitching my coat up around my waist. Then I sped down the aisle, zigzagging around the cluttered cubicles of the fashion editors to my modest little home, a cubicle with a few small reproductions of impressionist paintings tacked to the board alongside the grids of schedules that I tried to ignore. I slung my coat over the fake wall and saw the glaring red of an editor’s pencil mark shrieking from a piece of copy on my desk. What the hell? A rewrite? I almost never got a rewrite. Flopping into my chair, I picked up the piece—an old profile from the vault.
    The profile of Antoinette Lucas, network reporter and breast-cancer-research advocate, wasn’t edited at all, but the entire body of copy was circled in red with a note from Marty that said “See me.” Since it was my first “See me” since I’d started at the Herald, I was skeptical that Marty Baker was calling me in to laud my appropriately placed modifiers. Under that, my profile of the artist Zachary Khan was surrounded by a giant question mark. Not a typical editorial query.
    Suddenly, I sensed someone watching me. Lifting my head, I spotted Genevieve looking over my shoulder. I swatted at her with the papers in my hands.
    â€œOuch!” She stepped back, the fluorescent lights catching the gold highlights in her pixie-cut yellow hair. Christmas bulb earrings dangled in her ears, and I felt sorely tempted to stick her finger in a socket and light them up. “Looks like Marty’s on the warpath,” she said.
    â€œOh, really?” I turned the papers facedown on my desk. “He’s been questioning your work, too?”
    â€œNot me,” she beamed. “I just noticed those pieces in your in-box.”
    As in, you were snooping around in my stuff? I wanted to say it, but instead I squinted at her as if she were speaking in an ancient tongue. “Really?”
    â€œAnyway, he wants to see you. Better run.” She was so full of giddiness, I half expected bubbles to float out of her mouth.
    I leaned back and propped one high-heeled boot on the visitor’s chair. “I’ll take care of it,” I said casually. “And next time keep your mitts out of my in-box.”
    She gasped in mock indignation. “I had a reason—”
    â€œSure, you did. Just like you have a reason to disappear. Okay? Okay.” I opened a folder and pretended to become absorbed in the notes there—mostly a scribbled Christmas list and an expired list of chores: Bank, Cleaners, Pedicure, Pick up film from two years ago at CVS. . . .
    At least the diversion sent Genevieve bouncing off to her cubicle, which fortunately was a safe distance away, behind a pillar and on the other side of a TV monitor.
    I snatched up the red-marked pages and froze. What next? Should I run into Marty’s office and face this head on, or take a moment to compose myself and come up with a reasonable strategy. A smart woman would take these rewrites and put a spin on the situation. Yes, this is proof that I’m not really cut out for writing obituaries, and at the moment I’d be so much better at describing eggs Benedict and fresh strawberries with