CHAPTER NINE

It was all a matter of approach. Grace liked to talk. And she liked to talk about her fellow dictionary people. But she did so in such a soft-spoken, matter-of-fact way that it hardly seemed like gossip. Getting her to talk would simply require a similar finesse.

I waited a couple of days to make my move, mulling over various opening lines, avenues of conversation, sideways turns that would lead to Mr. Phillips. Still, as I stood near the water cooler on the decided day and hour of my approach, I wondered if it was unwise to go on this mission alone. I stepped a few feet away from the cooler so I could watch Grace at her desk.

She was absently stroking the curls over her ear with her left hand, and holding a citation in her right. She scrutinized it for a moment, then picked up another. There was a silver watch on her wrist that seemed to keep catching on her hair, but she didn’t seem to notice. Something about her reminded me of Mona. Maybe it was her size—although she didn’t seem so deviously tiny as Mona. She seemed a little healthier, perhaps, and less elfin. Maybe it was the similar ease with which she seemed to work. Grace’s ease, however, came with a calm that Mona definitely didn’t possess. But Mona might very well be this woman someday.

Fancying her just an old Mona made it easier to take a final deep breath, step up to her cubicle, and start shooting the shit.

“Hi, Grace,” I said as I approached.

“Good morning,” she said, smiling pleasantly as she put down the cit she’d been holding. “How’ve you been?”

“Pretty good. I got to go through the cits for ‘damaged goods’ this morning.”

“You defined it?”

“No. Unfortunately, it’s already been defined.”

“Too bad. That would’ve been a fun one for you. The first words are memorable,” she said, pulling a single long hair out of one of the chunky metal links of her watch. “It all becomes unremarkable pretty fast, I have to tell you. For better or for worse. Just a part of the routine. You find yourself defining some sleaze word and you don’t bat an eye. Or you’ll be with friends and you’ll hear someone say a word you defined, and you don’t even think of mentioning it to them.”

“That’s when you know it’s lost its novelty?”

“Or just when you know everyone’s sick of hearing you talk about it.” Grace laughed.

“My family hasn’t reached that point yet,” I told her. “My mother’s still full of questions when she calls.”

“That’ll change. Trust me. Maybe even by the end of Thanksgiving weekend. You going to see your family for the holiday?”

“Yeah.”

“They live near here?”

“Yeah. Connecticut.”

“That’s nice,” she said. “Mona has to fly out to see hers. Says she’ll probably be taking that whole week. Flight’s cheaper that way.”

“Oh?” This was news to me. Odd that Mona had told Grace, and that Grace thought it interesting enough to mention to me.

“Last year we took the same flight out to Cleveland, would you believe that? Her family lives in the same area as my brother-in-law. My husband and I go out there every other year.”

“Wow,” I said, feigning interest.

“I don’t know who was the most nervous of the three of us. It wasn’t too long after September eleventh, see?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Mona doesn’t seem to care much for flying,” Grace continued.

Shit, I thought. This conversation was definitely going in the wrong direction.

“So, Billy,” Grace said, maybe sensing my disinterest. “Are you enjoying living in Claxton?”

“It’s all right. I’ve got a nice cheap apartment. But it’s not exactly a happening city, though.”

“No, certainly not. What do you do for fun, then? Go to the mall?”

“It’s about come to that, sadly.”

“Aren’t any of your college friends still around?”

“Not really. An old buddy of mine’s up near Boston. I keep meaning to go up and see him there, but … anyway, Mona and I have hung out a couple of times.”

“It’s really a shame there aren’t more young editors here. They only hire one or two each year. And of course, not everybody stays.”

At this point, I was trying pretty desperately to think up a good segue. Time was ticking away. Grace was hurling conversational curveballs at me, and I couldn’t seem to whack them away quickly and skillfully enough. Most cubicleside chats I’d observed lasted three or four minutes, max. A few more minutes at her desk and I’d be a work-shirking parasite.

“I don’t need young people around to keep me entertained,” I ventured.

Grace looked at me as one might look at a child who has just accidentally Super-Glued his nostril shut.

“Just take Mr. Phillips,” I said hurriedly, plowing recklessly forward. “What a blast that guy is.”

“That’s for sure,” Grace said. “It’s been a lot quieter around here since he retired. I miss him. But it’s nice that he comes around once in a while to keep our spirits up. Even if it’s just as much to keep his spirits up.”

“When did he retire?” I asked.

“Three or four years ago. He’d been here almost forty years.”

“Forty?”

Grace nodded.“Just imagine,” she said.

I preferred not to. But I paused for a reverential moment before saying, “Did he by any chance have a nickname around here?”

Grace looked quizzical. “Not that I know of … why?”

“I just thought I heard Mr. Needham call him Red the other day.”

“Hmm,” Grace murmured, gazing sideways into her cubicle, thinking. “He’s had gray hair for almost as long as I’ve known him. But early on, he did have some red hair. He was definitely a redhead, back in the day. So it’s definitely plausible. But … no one’s ever called him that that I know of, and …”

She touched her hair again thoughtfully, then lowered her voice and said, “And Mr. Needham and Mr. Phillips have never exactly been on a, um, nickname basis.”

“Oh,” I whispered. Oops. As the eldest and crustiest member of the current staff, Mr. Needham had seemed to me the likeliest bud of the even older and crustier Mr. Phillips. “Well, I could be wrong,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Maybe I heard wrong. I’m just into nicknames.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“I dunno. No real reason. On my old football team, in high school, we always had nicknames for everybody.”

Not true. But believable, and somehow an appropriate thing to say, given my uniquely dopey image around the office.

Grace smiled politely. “And what was yours?” she asked.

“Homer,” I said. This part was true. I was the only member of the high school varsity team who actually read the books assigned to us in English classes. I usually summarized them in the locker room so the other guys could pass the pop quizzes. Selections of The Iliad were the first thing we had to read that year.

Grace twisted a finger into one of her graying blonde curls.

“After the Simpsons?” she asked, her blue eyes drifting up toward my forehead, then quickly darting back to my gaze.

“That or the Greek poet,” I admitted. “I was never sure which.”