A Hole in Juan Read Free Page A

well about the juniors’ poetry reading, and hoped nothing—not stage fright nor technical difficulties—
    would keep it from running smoothly. I was still in mild shock that they’d instigated the idea. I’d originally worried that it was a prank, a Mischief Night prequel, because why would students suddenly want to tape and broadcast their original poems?
    But they seemed sincere and appealingly innocent, so now I hoped it would be precisely as they’d envisioned it.
    When you walk, you see things you miss completely if you drive by, and not for the first time, I observed how Halloween had mutated from one night to a season. Halloween flags waved on poles, Halloween wreaths filled front doors, pumpkins were painted onto windows and jack-o’-lanterns, plastic and real, sat in entries and on sills. Half the magazine covers on the newsstand promised recipes or decorating ideas for All Hallow’s Eve. That dreadful cobwebby stuff ringed a shoe-repair shop’s window, black cats arched against imaginary moons, and scarecrows guarded produce in two groceries I passed.
    I peered into the window of a not-yet-open stationery store and considered a long rack of Halloween greeting cards. I really wanted to know what sentiments the holiday engendered.
    What were we so determinedly celebrating? Tricks and treats?
    Ghosts and goblins? Orange and black? Maybe we hadn’t come all that far from those Druid creatures who roamed the earth one night a year and needed to be appeased, although probably not with preprinted greeting cards.
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    A HOLE IN JUAN
    Next thing would be demands for a National Day of Haunt-ing.
    I was still vaguely amused by the excess of it all when I entered Philly Prep and greeted our newest secretary, Harriet Rummell. The school had been running through office personnel almost on a weekly basis, and I wasn’t sure how long Ms. Rummell would be with us, either.
    This is not to say she had any of the flaws of the past secretaries. She was neither a hostile antagonist, a hoarder of school supplies, a twittering puzzle-happy incompetent, nor too terrified to function.
    Another thing the solitary Thoreau missed knowing about was how many and various are the ways in which co-workers can grate one upon the other.
    Harriet Rummell was a happy woman. Her happiness was based on how wonderfully well her life was going. I’m not knocking that, but Harriet also took it for granted that the entire world wanted to share the details of her joy, and nothing short of bind-ing and gagging her would disabuse her of that idea.
    That, I’m knocking.
    Maybe even that wouldn’t be bad—except that it took so little to make Harriet happy, and not necessarily anything even mildly amusing. It simply took an event or idea that had happened to her.
    “Good morning, Miss Pepper!” She had sweet, small features. The horn-rimmed glasses that constantly slid down her small nose echoed and underlined the roundness of her face, as did her mop of brown curls. She was something like a child’s drawing—all circles and loops, and an almost eternal wide smile.
    She giggled. “Or should I call you Mrs. Mackenzie?”
    We’d been through this almost every day since I’d told her I had to change my personnel records, adding my student-husband to my medical insurance. Her joke was way beyond stale, but as I said, it took precious little to amuse Harriet, repeatedly. “I’m still keeping my maiden name,” I said as quietly as I GILLIAN ROBERTS
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    could. “Just like I was yesterday. Our students already seem confused about most things. I’m trying not to add to their burden.”
    She giggled and beamed, shaking her curls as if she could not get over my wit. Once she’d regained control, she straightened her face into her all-business expression. “Big day, huh?” she said.
    “Derek Ludo was in, and he told me. As if I needed a reminder!
    How often do we tape an actual TV show here?”
    I bit my bottom lip. Nobody but Harriet would