“It’s not a bit like you think.”
“ Well what way is it,” she asked with
dull, deadly sarcasm. Her voice was like a dead weight in his ear.
“I thought you were on my side.”
“ I am,” Grant said. “That’s why I
quit.”
Ingrid fell a click in her throat. The
vitality of her disgust drained away.
“ You quit,” she said dimly. “Because
of the letter?’’
“ You’re goddammed right,” he said.
“That piece of garbage came in the mail yesterday. I nearly shouted
myself blue in the face trying to get it out of my editor’s paws.”
Grant sounded as disgusted as any man could. “The fat bucket of
guts was practically pissing in his truss to get it in this
morning’s edition. I asked him if we were publishing a newspaper or
some rag someone wouldn’t even use to line the bottom of their bird
cages, and he just grinned like some dipshit dog. I told him the
letter came into my byline and if he used it I would sue his ass after I
quit.”
“ Can you do that,” Ingrid
asked.
“ And win,” Robin sighed wearily. “Not
a chance.”
“ You quit because of me?”
“ Ingrid, I’ve never seen anything as
coarsely abusive as that letter. It shocked me.” In a soft voice he
asked, “How are you taking it?”
“ I feel about as low as anyone could
ever feel, I think. It’s horrible. That woman, whoever she is, is
saying those horrible things about me.”
There were still pages and pages of
clippings and editorial sidebars. Articles had appeared in both
Time and Newsweek. Scientific American had prepared an article
about her. The supermarket tabloids printed broadsides “exposing”
monstrous mutations she had allegedly created. Her phone rang
incessantly.
Reporters waited to pounce when she
left her apartment to go to school. They took pictures and shoved
microphones in her face. Changing her number to an unlisted one
mattered not a whit. Huge sums of money were offered
her.
In desperation she had packed up her
most basic necessities and fled from her apartment at two am and
moved in with her father. The reporters found her the next day and
lined up outside her father’s house. Ingrid refused to go out.
After two days of this treatment, Jack Milner appeared on his
doorstep bright and early one morning, wearing only his pajama
bottoms and slippers, looking very much like Jed Clampett after
downing a four way hit of acid. His trouser drawstring hung down at
his crotch. He carried an M1 carbine and told the reporters
assembled on his lawn that if they didn’t leave his daughter alone,
he would blow every damned one of them out of their shoes where
they stood. The reporters had never expected to find a war zone in
their own backyard and that had been the last of the trouble with
them.
Ingrid closed her scrapbook and
replaced it. She started to close the closet door, then stopped.
Impulsively she took her scrapbook down and left it on the small
night table next to her bed.
She left the TV on when she went to
bed, hoping the calming noise would soothe her whirling nerves.
Oddly enough, she slept soundly, awakening very late the next
morning. Yet when she awoke it was not slowly, but with a sudden
jolt. Her gaze was drawn as unerringly to the TV screen as a
compass needle swings toward magnetic north.
On the screen, one of the towers of the
World Trade Center was in flames.
Horrified commentators squawked in
shock as the first people leaped from the burning building to the
murderous pavement one hundred stories below. Even as she tried to
assimilate this initial horror into her waking reality, a second
commercial airliner veered into the screen, banking left, she
thought, with inexorable deliberateness, and exploded into the
second tower of the World Trade Center in an explosion she knew
must be immense but looked uncannily small on the television
screen. Even years after, she would sometimes think of how it
seemed it would be so easy to freeze the frame of the jetliner
veering toward the
“ Well what way is it,” she asked with
dull, deadly sarcasm. Her voice was like a dead weight in his ear.
“I thought you were on my side.”
“ I am,” Grant said. “That’s why I
quit.”
Ingrid fell a click in her throat. The
vitality of her disgust drained away.
“ You quit,” she said dimly. “Because
of the letter?’’
“ You’re goddammed right,” he said.
“That piece of garbage came in the mail yesterday. I nearly shouted
myself blue in the face trying to get it out of my editor’s paws.”
Grant sounded as disgusted as any man could. “The fat bucket of
guts was practically pissing in his truss to get it in this
morning’s edition. I asked him if we were publishing a newspaper or
some rag someone wouldn’t even use to line the bottom of their bird
cages, and he just grinned like some dipshit dog. I told him the
letter came into my byline and if he used it I would sue his ass after I
quit.”
“ Can you do that,” Ingrid
asked.
“ And win,” Robin sighed wearily. “Not
a chance.”
“ You quit because of me?”
“ Ingrid, I’ve never seen anything as
coarsely abusive as that letter. It shocked me.” In a soft voice he
asked, “How are you taking it?”
“ I feel about as low as anyone could
ever feel, I think. It’s horrible. That woman, whoever she is, is
saying those horrible things about me.”
There were still pages and pages of
clippings and editorial sidebars. Articles had appeared in both
Time and Newsweek. Scientific American had prepared an article
about her. The supermarket tabloids printed broadsides “exposing”
monstrous mutations she had allegedly created. Her phone rang
incessantly.
Reporters waited to pounce when she
left her apartment to go to school. They took pictures and shoved
microphones in her face. Changing her number to an unlisted one
mattered not a whit. Huge sums of money were offered
her.
In desperation she had packed up her
most basic necessities and fled from her apartment at two am and
moved in with her father. The reporters found her the next day and
lined up outside her father’s house. Ingrid refused to go out.
After two days of this treatment, Jack Milner appeared on his
doorstep bright and early one morning, wearing only his pajama
bottoms and slippers, looking very much like Jed Clampett after
downing a four way hit of acid. His trouser drawstring hung down at
his crotch. He carried an M1 carbine and told the reporters
assembled on his lawn that if they didn’t leave his daughter alone,
he would blow every damned one of them out of their shoes where
they stood. The reporters had never expected to find a war zone in
their own backyard and that had been the last of the trouble with
them.
Ingrid closed her scrapbook and
replaced it. She started to close the closet door, then stopped.
Impulsively she took her scrapbook down and left it on the small
night table next to her bed.
She left the TV on when she went to
bed, hoping the calming noise would soothe her whirling nerves.
Oddly enough, she slept soundly, awakening very late the next
morning. Yet when she awoke it was not slowly, but with a sudden
jolt. Her gaze was drawn as unerringly to the TV screen as a
compass needle swings toward magnetic north.
On the screen, one of the towers of the
World Trade Center was in flames.
Horrified commentators squawked in
shock as the first people leaped from the burning building to the
murderous pavement one hundred stories below. Even as she tried to
assimilate this initial horror into her waking reality, a second
commercial airliner veered into the screen, banking left, she
thought, with inexorable deliberateness, and exploded into the
second tower of the World Trade Center in an explosion she knew
must be immense but looked uncannily small on the television
screen. Even years after, she would sometimes think of how it
seemed it would be so easy to freeze the frame of the jetliner
veering toward the
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