Desire Lines by Christina Baker Kline

Author:Christina Baker Kline [Kline, Christina Baker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780062020826
Google: 2FTWmNClo6gC
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2011-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Later that afternoon, in the middle of a thunderstorm, Kathryn drives to Governor’s, a diner on a commercial strip littered with fast-food restaurants and car-lube shops. She dashes inside and is ushered to a red vinyl booth; within seconds, an enormous laminated menu and a glass of water materialize before her. Overhead, an electric toy train chugs around on a track. Pictures of all of Maine’s governors, with the current one in the middle, line the back wall. Waitresses laden with food rush around as if they’re in a relay.

The sky outside is separated into milky curds. Rain falls in sheets, drumming the asphalt and the cars and the road signs, making everything shiny. Though it’s only four o’clock, the cars on the road have their lights on. Kathryn loves this feeling of being warm and dry in a cheerful, busy place when it’s miserable outside. She takes out her tape recorder and cassettes and notebook and piles them on the table, and then opens the menu, examining the dizzying array of options.

By the time Jack arrives, late as usual, the waitress is already coming toward them with a burger and fries. “Sorry,” Kathryn tells him, “I was starving.”

The waitress sets the food in front of Kathryn and shakes out her hands. “Whew, heavy. Enjoy it. What about you?” she says to Jack. “Just some tea, thanks. Earl Grey.”

“We got Lipton.”

“Fine, whatever.”

When the waitress leaves, Jack leans forward and says, “Isn’t it great to be home? Where else in the world would the heaviness of the food be considered a bonus?”

Kathryn smiles, a little nervously. She knows he’s trying to break the ice. This is their formal “meeting,” as opposed to the informal one at the Sea Dog two days ago, and Kathryn has been feeling jumpy and insecure all day about the work she’s done on the story since he threatened to take her off it.

She spent the morning transcribing the tapes of her conversations with Rachel and Brian, and they seem frustratingly incomplete. She wishes she’d asked different questions, or at least more of them. So many of the things they discussed seem trivial: who liked whom, who was jealous of whom. And she could kick herself for not having pushed Rachel further, gotten her to tell what she knew. Kathryn knows that in backing off she broke the first rule of reporting, that you don’t want to give your source too much time to think. If you have to go back for more information, they’re almost always less willing to give it.

The waitress returns with Jack’s tea, the red paper tag hanging over the side of the cup. He bobs it up and down several times before taking the bag out, placing it in the bowl of a spoon and wrapping the string around it to wring it out into his cup. “It’s gotta be strong,” he explains when he notices Kathryn watching this process. “On days like this all I want to do is stay in bed.

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