Poe Read Free Page A

barbarism complete with cannibalism and rampant destruction of whatever civilization remained, it would not surprise me in the least to find Nate at the head of the ruling clan with a scavenged thigh bone in hand and automatic rifles strapped to his back, screeching through the ravaged streets in some kind of assemblage of truck, a la Mad Max . As it is, Nate’s proclivities toward violence are limited to editing my writing with bloody, indecipherable marks made with a red Sharpie.
    “She’s a source,” I say.
    Nate hugs himself and makes obnoxious kissing noises. “Just kidding, slugger,” he says, giving my other shoulder a punch, so now I’ll have a bruise to match the one Bob gave me.
    I try to hunch over my laptop, like I’m right on the verge of something truly incredibly important or at least more absorbing than starting a discussion. Nate, as usual, misses (or ignores) the cues. He settles on the corner of my desk, his balls frighteningly close to my stapler.
    His eyes furrow in some kind of bad caveman impression. “I don’t get it, Shakespeare. Why do you spend so much time on this crap?”
    “Crap? What crap?” I say.
    Nate pulls out a handful of crumpled and sweaty-looking obits from his back pocket. Nate likes to edit while he’s on the treadmill at the gym. He’s often said he does his best thinking while pumping iron. Seriously.
    I hate to admit it, but I’m a little jealous of his ability to work the phrase “pumping iron” into everyday conversation. I wish I could randomly drop lines like, “Yeah, I was in the middle of a triathlon,” but I have a long-standing aversion to any activity that involves pain and an increased heart rate.
    “This crap,” says Nate, pushing a pile of my writing at me. “Do you know how long it takes me to edit this shit?” Nate pulls a sheet out and squints at it. “He died of an unidentified prosodemic illness. Who talks like this? Every other sentence I have to use a dictionary.”
    I take one of the pages and try to flatten it back out.
    “It’s like a fucking never-ending game of Scrabble. And I hate Scrabble.” Nate picks up my pencil and starts scratching the back of his ear with it.
    “Maybe you should rethink your vocation,” I mutter.
    “There!” says Nate, pointing my pencil back at me. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. What the hell is a vocation?”
    “It’s a kind of candle,” I say without hesitation. I have no mercy.
    “Oh yeah,” says Nate. “Those little ones… Anyway, we can’t print all this shit. No one cares. It’s just dead old people.”
    I swallow everything I’d like to say. Hard. “So what would you like me to change?”
    “Just take out some words. The big ones.”
    I look at the pile in front of me. “So you want me to just take out some words .”
    Nate’s face brightens measurably. “Now you get it.” He does an excited drum roll on my desk. “Just get it down to the designer before deadline. We cool?”
    I have no intention of editing a word. “We cool,” I say.

    My parents’ obituary was sparse—they got one paragraph combined, as if their dying together had somehow melded their lives into a single conglomeration, punctuated by my father’s country of origin (Russia) and a vague allusion to my mother’s interest in baking. An ad for Dalton Discount Motors pushed hard into their column: 0% DOWN, NO PAYMENTS FOR SIX MONTHS, DRIVE AWAY HAPPY . I don’t know who gave the details to the writer at their local paper—I was a little blown out at the time—and the whole experience had the feel of a bad hallucinogenic trip. Not that I have a lot of experience with that kind of thing, but before I failed college last year I did a little experimenting.
    In fact, the night my parents died I’d been to a disastrous Halloween party at a frat house. There was this hot girl from my English Lit class with long, wavy hair who’d decided the best costume was none at all. She gave me a hallucinogenic