Front-Page McGuffin & The Greatest Story Never Told Read Free Page A

took another couple—Jack Blonstein, who had a singing voice that the angels would love, and Nick Diamanetti, who knew every joke that had ever existed (or so it seemed)—Front-Page watching them slip away in quiet hospital rooms with a barrage of blipping machines and suspended drips fixed onto scrawny arms.
    A traffic accident took one of his best friends, a car crash up in Vermont where Bill Berison and his wife, Jenny had gone to see the fall colours on the trees. It had been something Bill had always planned to do.
    Then, on New Year’s Eve of 1994, in a lonely hospital ward in the South Bronx, Betty McGuffin gave in to the cancer that roiled inside her, slipping regretfully away from Front-Page into the waiting bedsheets, holding Front-Page’s hand so tight he thought it would shatter and biting her lip to try to hold on another few minutes. To stay with him.
    Thus, as millions of people celebrated the sudden movement of a clock-hand onto 12, the world ended for Front-Page McGuffin.
    It didn’t end with the cataclysmic explosion that Front-Page and his friends at the Times had been predicting in the 1950s and ‘60s, but with a sudden rush of silence that accentuated all of the minutiae of sound and colour that surrounded him.
    He didn’t remember getting home that night. Didn’t remember getting into the suddenly wide and empty and lonely bed: it had been wide and empty for all of the nights that Betty had been in hospital but then Front-Page had been praying and hoping she’d come back. Now that he knew she would never be coming back, the bed was the loneliest place in the world.
    The next night, he had been gone down to The Land at the End of the Working Day the way he’d gone down there to Jack Fedogan’s bar most nights round about 6.30, for just a couple of drinks before going home to Betty and supper. Edgar Nornhoevan had been in that night, just like he was most nights, and Jim Leafman, too. Even McCoy Brewer came in, at around 10, armed with a passle of jokes that would have made even Nick Diamanetti smile.
    Nobody mentioned Betty even once, but everyone bought Front-Page a drink and everyone gave his shoulder a squeeze. Once or twice, Edgar and Jim and McCoy saw Jack wiping his face with a towel, making out like the heat was getting to him, even though it was the first day of January and cold enough to freeze the spit as you swallowed it. Edgar, Jim and McCoy figured Jack Fedogan was thinking back about his own Phyllis and recognizing Front-Page’s grief and his loss.
    At a little after midnight, Front-Page made his farewells and stumbled up the stairs and out into the night. They never saw him again.
    Not until tonight.
    Three years later.

    * * *

    The three men at the table sit and stare.
    Jack Fedogan stands and stares, the seemingly ever-present glass that he polishes held limply in one hand and the towel in the other.
    Over behind them, Edgar, Jim and McCoy hear the sound of chair legs being pushed roughly across the floor. When they turn around they see Bills Williams standing up at his table and staring across at the new customer.
    It’s a night for staring, though none of the other patrons—the irregular regulars—are paying any attention to Front-Page McGuffin.
    “Hello,” says Front-Page, like he’s been here every night for months, but stammering the word and making it come out in a kind of croak.
    Jack Fedogan leans on the bar and shakes his head. “Front-Page,” he says, “Where you been hiding yourself?”
    Front-Page McGuffin looks around like he’s seeing the place for the first time, frowning and blinking his eyes. As they watch, Edgar, McCoy and Jim notice one of the eyelids seems to hang down longer, like it’s got stuck on the way back. Front-Page lifts his left arm and starts swinging it towards his face, the fingers moving slow and robotic like the pick-up-a-prize machines out on Coney Island. Eventually, the hand gently connects with Front-Page’s neck and then