LITMIR.BIZ

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not so bad,” George says. “I’m already lumpy.”

      “But you’re good lumpy.”

      My best friend’s waist-to-hip ratio is fairly generous, though it certainly doesn’t seem to bother anybody except her. When we walk down the street together, George’s jiggles and curves and curls garner far more lustful stares than my straight lines do. Still, she’s pretty timid when it comes to men, and almost completely oblivious to her effect on them. Her “sort of” boyfriend—one of our old creative-writing profs, a serial student-dater who’s been toying with her for years—isn’t helping her self-esteem much, either.

      “Good lumpy? I wouldn’t go that far.” She snorts at the suggestion that such a thing might actually be possible. “I’d take an A-cup any day. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

      “So why hasn’t it happened for me yet?”

      The closest I’d ever come to a relationship since Jim (and now Jean-Jean, I suppose) was a string of three one-night stands with the same guy. Over the course of two semesters. He was a fairly cute bartender at a popular club just off campus—quite a coup, but I could never shake the feeling that Freddie thought I was a different person each time.

      “Just give it time, Holly. It will. I promise. For both of us. And we’re in it together till then…”

      At least I have that. With George around, I know I will never really be alone. We sit in silence for a bit, finishing the cheesecake. Good old cheesecake. How can you be sad when it’s giving you a great big hug from the inside?

      “Maybe I just need to regroup,” I say finally. “Get a handle on things. Figure out where my life is going.”

      “That’s the spirit!”

      We pay the bill and head outside. It’s late August, and very, very hot. Three blocks away, the mirrored windows of the Buffalo Bugle tower shine brightly before the mostly older buildings of the city skyline. Inside, I know exactly what’s going on: absolutely nothing of any interest whatsoever. Today is exactly the same as yesterday, which was exactly the same as the day before that, and the day before that. I want to walk in the other direction.

      “I haven’t taken a holiday since Christmas, you know.”

      “Nobody could fault your work ethic.”

      “It’s not doing me any good. Nobody notices. I’m there late all the time, working on all kinds of things that aren’t even part of my job description.”

      “They notice, Holly. You’re really good at what you do. Look, call me later and we’ll figure it out. Just promise me you won’t start smoking again! At least not today…”

      “Smoking, drinking, snorting—what’s the difference?” I laugh. “Remember, I know how it’s all going to end, anyway, so I may as well have a good time now. In fact, we should probably go out tonight and toast my long, lonely life. Like a premortem wake!”

      “Oh, yeah!” She grins. “Now, that’s my girl!”

      We part ways and George heads back toward the dingy bookshop and her own lame job, which is just as boring and futile as my own, although, it suddenly occurs to me, she never really seems to complain about it.

      Fortified by diner food and the promise of a good night out, my optimism surges. And thinking about John Michael Whitney reminds me that my life—even the sad and lonely one I’d envisioned for myself that morning—reads like an absolute fairy tale. My obituary will be a call to arms; things are going to change.

      Cy will have to understand. Though ground down by years of unpaid overtime, he rarely takes a day off, opting instead to live and eat and sleep in his office and take it all way too seriously. It’s not that Cy’s nasty, or even sexist—something I’d heard implied more than once by my oft-over-looked female coworkers—but he just doesn’t seem to get that not everybody can give one hundred and ten percent for $24,500 a year and no dental benefits.

      “I need to take some personal time,” I tell him as soon as I get back from lunch.

      Personal time, I am fully aware, does not count toward employees’ vacation time, of which I still have one week left and am hesitant to squander before Christmas. Though a right guaranteed by law, taking personal time usually imparts a faint whiff of mental instability, unless of course there’s been a death in the family. If Cy perceives my asking for it now as crazy or, even worse, frivolous or lazy, it might move me down a notch in his books, and I need him on my side if I am ever to get ahead at the Bugle.

      “I see,” he says without looking up from his screen. “How much?”

      “A week.”

      “When?”

      “Starting Monday?”

      He glances at me. “That’s soon. Everything okay?”

      “Yeah,” I sigh. “But I’m a bit…burned out.”

      That oughta work.

      Most of the senior reporters and editors I know seem to regard journalism as a sort of religion, with cynicism standing in where faith should be. It’s their lives, twenty-four/seven, and it’s easy to become weary under the weight of it all, whether you’re reporting live from the trenches of a war-torn Iraq like Christiane Amanpour or penning “The Buffalo Entertainment Beat” like the Bugle’s own Bucky Jones. In theory, it should be no different for me. Invoking a burnout, like losing the faith, is a serious admission, and one not to be taken lightly. Plus, it might even have the added benefit of suggesting to him that I take my job more seriously than I actually do.

      “Okay,” Cy says. “Just get that intern whatsisname to cover you.”

      “That’s all?”

      “Yup. Have fun. And shut the door on your way out—I can’t seem to get a fucking moment’s peace today.”

      So that’s it. I am so easily replaceable that an unpaid intern whose area of expertise is photocopying his ass is able to do my job on a moment’s notice.

      I back out of his office and shut the door. His name, stenciled in stout black capitals, stares me square in the face: CY THURRELL, SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR. Cy had finished school nearly two years after I did, though he was only one year younger. He’d started at the Bugle as a lowly free-lancer three years ago and moved up the ranks at the speed of light.

      It has actually turned out to be a pretty big news day for Buffalo—a small warehouse fire and a hit-and-run involving a monster truck and a traffic light downtown—so the frenzied comings and goings of my coworkers are more than enough to distract me. The prospect of an accidental death or two has whipped me into stand-by mode, and I await intelligence of any fatalities with my usual combination of concerned journalistic professionalism and detached personal curiosity.

      Now I suppose I should ask anyone who might find my anticipation of tragedy distasteful or inappropriate to please keep in mind that this is what I do, day in day out, and am no more eager for news of someone’s death than a garbageman is eager to see the can on the curb. But I will admit that five years at this gig may have hardened me a little to the whole concept of death and dying, to the point where I can probably think of it and speak of it with more ease than most. I consider this a blessing of sorts, since it has freed me from the usual hang-ups and sentimentality associated with the whole mess, provided the death in question is not my own, of course.

      The key, in my line of work, is to strive for balance. And what could be more life-affirming than someone who makes you thank heaven you’re alive? Jesse, a reporter for the City Desk and deliverer of a crush that comes and goes, scoots over on his chair to apprise me of the situation.

      “Fire’s not too bad. Team’s there now,” he says, with a crack of his gum. Normally, that sort of terse sexiness would be enough to send me into a tizzy of stuttered responses and imagined wedding-planning, but today I’m not up for it, even though he is in Abercrombie

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