Booklist Online - Reading Is My Business: A Short Story, by Keir Graff (FEATURE)
Reading Is My Business: A Short Story.
Graff, Keir (author).
FEATURE. First published May 1, 2008 (Booklist).
There are 10,000 galleys in the naked city, and all our
hung-over reviewer has to do is find one of them—
in the first ever short fiction to be published in Booklist.
(If you started reading this story in the print magazine, click here to find your place.)
I woke up somewhere under the Loop. I was lying across two handicapped seats in a southbound Red Line train. I got off at the next station, crossed the platform, and got on a train going north. The people in my car looked as miserable as only Chicagoans in late February can look. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window. I made the miserable people look like they were at Mardi Gras.
I got off at Chicago Avenue and rode the escalators up to the street. On the second one, I became fascinated by a guy who stopped walking 10 feet from the top and stood poised like he was about to jump out of an airplane. He didn’t look like a tourist, but you never can tell. He made the landing, but I can’t say the same for myself. I was so busy watching him that I stumbled where the escalator met the sidewalk and fell headlong. I’m a pretty big guy, so I think it made an impression.
“He doesn’t look like a tourist,” I heard someone say.
I collected my bag and climbed to my feet. The sunlight looked like day-old piss and was just as warm. The sidewalk was a stew of rock salt, mud, and melting snow. My left foot felt wet. I looked down, thinking I’d blundered into some dog shit. It was even worse: I was missing my left boot. It must have happened during the train ride. But who needed a size-12 mukluk? And why would they take the one with the hole in it?
I turned right on Wabash and hoofed it the two blocks to work. The good part about having a soaking, freezing foot was that it took my mind off the gong clanging inside my skull.
Jessie, the guard, is a sweet, grandmotherly thing unless you’re looking for a place to sit down. Once I watched her, all of five feet tall, give the bum’s rush to a couple of well-traveled outdoorsmen who wanted to savor their cigarette butts on the front steps. I had planned to offer her a hand, but by the time I got there, I felt so bad for the bums that I slipped them a five when she wasn’t looking.
I flashed Jessie my ID and a hopeful smile as I lurched through the door. She frowned, but she let me in. Lucky thing because I lost my ID six months ago. But I find that an expired Sam’s Club card works in a pinch.
I gasped my way up the back stairs, then took the long way around to my office. It was wasted effort: taped to my computer screen was a full-page note: MY OFFICE ASAP. I recognized the handwriting on the hieroglyphic. It belonged to my boss, Bill Ott. I tore the note off, crumpled it into a ball, and shot it in an extravagant arc toward the wastebasket, tongue dangling and wrist flopping just like Jordan used to do it. I pumped my first—swish!—and looked up to see Ott standing in the doorway. cont….
