Jordan's Branch by Howard Owen

Author:Howard Owen
Language: deu
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781579626440
Publisher: The Permanent Press
Published: 2021-01-24T16:00:00+00:00

I WASTE the rest of the morning or early afternoon waiting for the bandits at my favorite garage to get through inspecting the Honda. Virginia, either to make the highways safer or to line the pockets of mechanics, dictates that we have to get our vehicles inspected once a year.

With the Honda, it’s always something. Hell, the damn thing has almost two hundred thousand miles on it.

This time, it’s the brakes.

“How much,” I ask the young guy who gives me the bad news like a doctor telling you you’ve got Stage 4 cancer, “would you take to just put the damn sticker on and look the other way?”

He seems offended.

Two hours later and a few hundred dollars lighter, the Accord and I make our escape.

I stop at a burger joint on the way in and get to the paper not long after I was supposed to be there.

When I report for duty, I see Wheelie, Sarah, and Benson Stine, our present publisher, in what appears to be serious conversation in Wheelie’s office. I know it’s serious because Wheelie is doing that thing he does when he’s presented with a plate-load of crap. He grips the arms of his chair tight, as if to prevent himself from flying over the desk and strangling someone. So far, Wheelie has held tight.

The office, as with the rest of the editors’ digs, is enclosed by glass, so the whole newsroom can see that something’s happening here, but since none of us are lipreaders, what it is ain’t exactly clear.

“Probably trying to decide whether to give us 5 percent or 10 percent raises next year,” Sally Velez says. No one even bothers to laugh.

When their little confab breaks up, I wait half an hour and then mosey over to Sarah’s small office.

“Don’t even ask me, Willie,” she says when she sees me standing in the door.

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