The Lola Quartet Read Free

python in your backyard."
       "Oh, I did ," she said. "Well, not in the backyard exactly, but there's this point where the yard sort of blends into the canal, and—" She was interrupted by the chime of a doorbell. It was her neighbor, a beautiful woman of about fifty with very high cheekbones and silver hair, here to see if she might borrow a stepladder, and yes, she would be delighted to speak with the reporter from New York for a few minutes. She talked about the beauty of Florida, the flowers and the palm trees and the endless summertime, blue pools.
       "And how long have you lived out here," Gavin asked, "by the swamps?"
       "A few years." The neighbor smiled. "It's funny. We thought we were coming closer to nature," she said, "but all along nature was creeping closer to us."
       Gavin said his good-byes and drove to the airport. He found himself staring at children in the terminal lounge. On the flight north out of Florida he tried not to think about anything except the story he was writing, William Chandler in hip waders standing up to his knees in the swamps at the far edge of the suburbs, a radio-tracking device beeping in his hand, "This means there's a python right at our feet, Gavin, right at our feet, you just can't see it because the water's so murky." The nervous residents of the outer suburbs, gazing out their back windows at canals. The conservationist who'd told him that the creatures in the swamps meant they were entering a time when every place would look the same as every other place, the same pythons, the same parrots, the same palm trees from Florida to Indonesia to Argentina, an ecological flattening of experience. He worked steadily until the island of Manhattan appeared below his window, and then he closed his laptop and tried not to think about the girl during the descent.

    T h e f i r s t thing Gavin heard when he opened the door to his apartment was the leaking shower. It seemed to be getting worse, the drips more frequent, but he still didn't know where the landlord's phone number was and now he was too distracted to care. He left his suitcase in the apartment and took the subway to work. The newsroom seemed somehow changed in his absence. There were fewer people here than usual. A sense of dissipation hung in the air. It reminded him of the time when he'd come in late on a Christmas Eve to wrap up a piece and found the newsroom a shadow of itself, a ghost town. But the difference now, he realized with a lurching feeling in his stomach, was that a dozen desks had been cleared. Silas's papers and notebooks and the photograph of his wife had vanished, his computer monitor a dark window reflecting Gavin back at himself and behind him a ghostly version of the newsroom, all shadows and pale smudges of light.
       "You missed all the fun," his editor said when he came to her.
       "Where's Silas?"
       "Sit down." There was a tiredness around her eyes that he hadn't seen before. He sat by her desk. "We were treated to a speech the day after you left," she said. "Declining ad revenue, ever fewer subscribers, the relentless expectation of free online content, et cetera. You've heard it before. It's a boring story."
    "Why didn't you tell me?"
       "Why didn't I take the time to call you in Florida and explain that twelve of your colleagues had been laid off? Because believe it or not, kiddo, I've been a little busy in their absence." She told him the names and some of them were friends of his.
       "Christ," he said. "Can you tell me anything else?"
       "You're wondering about your job. I'm wondering about mine too." Julie sighed. "I don't know what to tell you," she said. "You're in a strange position. On the one hand, you're not that senior. On the other hand, that means you're relatively cheap. No offense."
       "None taken. I've seen my pay stubs."
       She took off her glasses and massaged her temples for a moment before she spoke again. "Listen," she said, "just between