Slate by Nathan Aldyne

Author:Nathan Aldyne
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781937384944
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
Published: 2014-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

AS VALENTINE ROSE SLOWLY in the ancient cage elevator, the cables and the pulleys shook and wheezed and screeched as if they had not been oiled since their installation. When, with a rattle and a sigh, it finally lurched to a halt on the sixth floor of the narrow office building, Valentine threw back the accordion grate and the wooden safety door and stepped onto the landing. He looked around for the fire stairs and decided that that would be his way back down.

He unzipped his brown leather jacket and loosened the gray scarf that had been tightly wrapped around his neck. He glanced down the narrow hallway. Two glass-domed lights hung from the ceiling, inadequately illuminating the dingy gray walls and the chipped linoleum floor. The linoleum perhaps once had had a distinct pattern, but years of wear and patching had obliterated it. At the end of the hall, past four single office doors, sunlight filtered weakly through the dusty panes of a tiny window overlooking West Street. Valentine could hear traffic, construction machinery, and a siren from below. From behind the office doors, he heard a telephone ringing, muted murmuring voices, and a radio playing soft rock. Valentine stepped over to the wall directory and checked his reflection in the glass. He then walked down the hall and opened the last of the four doors, entering the reception area of the Boston Area Reporter, employer of the late Sweeney Drysdale II.

“Excuse me—” Valentine began, but then was startled into silence. The receptionist was Apologetic Joe.

Joe didn’t look up. He wore Sony Walkman earphones. The Walkman itself was propped up in an open desk drawer. Joe was listening with intense concentration and jotting notes on a piece of BAR stationery. The clacking of a manual typewriter could be heard behind a closed door to one of the inner offices.

Valentine shut the outer door of the office, and the vibration caught Joe’s attention. Valentine smiled and greeted Slate’s future bouncer in pantomime. Joe pushed back the earphones, which slipped gracefully off the back of his head and closed around his neck.

“Sorry,” said Joe, “I didn’t hear you. What brings you here? Can I do something for you?”

“I brought in an ad for Slate,” said Valentine. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m recepting,” said Joe. “I just started a couple of days ago. I mean, I can use the extra money till the bar opens— especially since they’ve given me a column. You know,” he added shyly, “it’s always been my ambition to have a newspaper column, but I never really thought I’d get it. It’s not one of BAR’s big columns, but it’s in every week.” He tapped his pen on his note pad. “That’s what I was working on when you came in.”

“Gossip? Sports? What are you doing?”

“I’m writing the Disco Digest column.”

“Disco Digest?”

“I take the most popular songs of the week, and I listen to ’em real carefully,” he nodded at the Walkman, “and then I write down what the songs are about—what they’re really about.

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