Changing the Past Read Free Page A

that comes disassembled. He could admit there were exceptions, but his was scarcely the kind of work that tended to preserve the awe one had felt for story-tellers as a bookish, hypochondriacal child.
    He passed through the vestibule into the inner reaches of Rodgers, Wirth & Maddox, known familiarly as RWM, none of whose founders was still alive, and went to his part of its world, an enclosure with walls and two doorways but without doors that could be closed. A certain separation from the rest of the office was useful, but for this kind of work there was no need for privacy—with a few exceptions during Hunsicker’s long tenure: e.g., the memoirs of a former secretary of the treasury which, the publicity and advertising departments vulgarly hinted, were to reveal a lot of dirt on his former political colleagues. Access to this manuscript was restricted and Hunsicker himself had done all the copy-editing thereof, in the borrowed corner office of a vice-president (the promotional promise was exaggerated: most of the “revelations” had been known for ages and the rest were petty).
    Three full-time copy-editors comprised Hunsicker’s department, not counting him, and during the busy seasons when the manuscripts came in multitudes, he had to resort to a list of auxiliary free-lancers if the publishing schedule was to be met.
    All three of his subordinates (though at least two of them would have rejected that term) were at work as he entered now. Myron Beckersmith, a tall, knobby young man with intense eyes under heavy brows, was poring over one of the tomes from the small but versatile reference library maintained by the copy-editing department on a wall of shelves not too far behind the desk of Carrie Janes, a pudgy young woman with a complexion of pearl, the newest member of the team and the most learned, having actually studied classical Greek. Carrie at the moment was exercising her most annoying habit, blowing the hanging hair away from her eyes rather than pinning it back in some fashion or, better yet—given a profession that kept her bending all day over a sheaf of paper—having a more practical coiffure. And worse than watching her fat lower lip extend, chimpanzee-style, to puff air upwards, was to check over a manuscript when her job was done (as head of department, Hunsicker always did this, for it was he who bore the official responsibility for any errors or oversights) and find stray hairs throughout: to Hunsicker this was almost as offensive as if he had found such in his lunchtime bowl of soup.
    His return now was visibly marked only by the remaining member of the trio, Dorothy Kalergis, the eldest after him though at forty-one not all that old. She was also the only one other than he to have been married and have children, with the difference that Dorothy was a divorcée of some years and her children were still young enough to live with her.
    She looked up now and winked sardonically at him. There was a possibility that she had formerly had some hopes he might wish to extend their professional association, which was amiable, into private life, and that her tendency to guy him in more recent times was founded in disappointment. The fact was that even if he had been free, he would not have been attracted sexually to Dorothy, who was of the type for which he had least physical taste, being thin to the point of gauntness, with nervous, darting eyes and a quick, shrill laugh, hearing which was like being poked in the nape with a sharp pencil.
    â€œHope the matinee was everything you hoped it would be,” Dorothy said now. “Would we know the lady?”
    To be a good sport, always advisable in a superior, Hunsicker had to play along with such japery though he found it tiresome.
    â€œCan’t keep a secret around here!” he complained in mock despair. He hung his damp trench coat on the hall tree in the corner: he had his own.
    Dorothy moued in what suddenly did not seem