Are You Happy Now? Read Online Free Page A
Author: Richard Babcock
on his pedagogical stroll down Clark. A real editor. How can you be a real editor without any real writers?
3
A T ABOUT SIX o’clock that evening, Lincoln puts his pencil down. He locks his desk, carefully folds his New York Times to expose the daily crossword puzzle, and walks into the small central lobby of Pistakee Press. The place is abandoned, utterly lifeless. The receptionist always leaves at 5:00 p.m. sharp, flipping the switchboard to automatic. The front panel of overhead lights has been turned off, leaving the area near the elevator in gloom. The handful of editors, secretaries, and bookkeepers—and Byron Duddleston himself—have all slipped out silently on their own, as always, never bidding good-bye to Lincoln, never, as far as he knows, even acknowledging each other as they leave. It’s as if the place empties in shame, he thinks. He compares it to the rousing daily exits he recalls from his summer at Malcolm House, when he and the other interns and editorial assistants always looked each other up for news of the latest adventures and scandals, usually moving the conversation to a nearby bar. Sometimes some of the younger editors would join them, and often as not the roistering would carry on well into the night.
On the other hand, Lincoln reminds himself, the end of the workday was deadly at the Tribune , too. Maybe it’s a Chicago thing.
Pistakee’s offices are in River North, an old manufacturing neighborhood just north of the Loop that came alive with galleries in the eighties, when the art market was hopping, even in the Midwest. The galleries drew restaurants and shops, and by the late nineties the creaky, low-scale neighborhood was sprouting flesh-toned residential high-rises (lively colors don’t sell) and multi-story parking garages, a building boom that threatened to engulf the original redbrick cityscape—at least until the real-estate collapse. Still, River North retains patches of funkiness, and most blocks remain open enough to feature late afternoon sun in the summer.
Lincoln walks west on Grand, checking the windows of the faux authentic Irish bar on the way; south on LaSalle, past what was once Michael Jordan’s restaurant, shuttered after an unseemly tussle among the principals; west on Illinois; south on Wells; west on Kinzie; and on into the huge fortress of the Merchandise Mart, a commercial building that was long in the hands of the Kennedy family but never acquired any cachet from the association. In the Mart, Lincoln takes the escalator to the second-floor entrance to the elevated-train station. He dips his fare card into the machine and joins a crowd of mostly young, natty professionals waiting for the Brown Line train headed for revived neighborhoods to the north.
Lincoln enjoys the L and considers it one of Chicago’s small wonders. When he was a student with more time in the middle of the day, he sometimes traveled the train just for the sport of it. The view from the L offers an unusual perspective on a city, Lincoln thinks—the track snakes through neighborhoods at about the level of a second-story window, and the train frequently thrusts with astonishing impudence past the living rooms and bedrooms in the buildings along the way. Twice he has spotted people fucking, and once, riding the Red Line just beyond Diversey Parkway, traveling through a gentrified old German neighborhood, he saw a girl, stark naked, with lovely,buoyant breasts and a small wedge of dark pubic hair, standing at a window, facing the tracks. Their eyes met in the split second it took the train to pass, and Lincoln was certain she gestured to him, beckoning, as the train rumbled on. How many years ago was that? Eight, maybe—well before he was married, before he’d even met his wife. In all the years since, he’s never passed that building without looking and imagining.
Today, the Brown Line is running behind, as usual, and by the time a train arrives at the Merchandise Mart station, the
3
A T ABOUT SIX o’clock that evening, Lincoln puts his pencil down. He locks his desk, carefully folds his New York Times to expose the daily crossword puzzle, and walks into the small central lobby of Pistakee Press. The place is abandoned, utterly lifeless. The receptionist always leaves at 5:00 p.m. sharp, flipping the switchboard to automatic. The front panel of overhead lights has been turned off, leaving the area near the elevator in gloom. The handful of editors, secretaries, and bookkeepers—and Byron Duddleston himself—have all slipped out silently on their own, as always, never bidding good-bye to Lincoln, never, as far as he knows, even acknowledging each other as they leave. It’s as if the place empties in shame, he thinks. He compares it to the rousing daily exits he recalls from his summer at Malcolm House, when he and the other interns and editorial assistants always looked each other up for news of the latest adventures and scandals, usually moving the conversation to a nearby bar. Sometimes some of the younger editors would join them, and often as not the roistering would carry on well into the night.
On the other hand, Lincoln reminds himself, the end of the workday was deadly at the Tribune , too. Maybe it’s a Chicago thing.
Pistakee’s offices are in River North, an old manufacturing neighborhood just north of the Loop that came alive with galleries in the eighties, when the art market was hopping, even in the Midwest. The galleries drew restaurants and shops, and by the late nineties the creaky, low-scale neighborhood was sprouting flesh-toned residential high-rises (lively colors don’t sell) and multi-story parking garages, a building boom that threatened to engulf the original redbrick cityscape—at least until the real-estate collapse. Still, River North retains patches of funkiness, and most blocks remain open enough to feature late afternoon sun in the summer.
Lincoln walks west on Grand, checking the windows of the faux authentic Irish bar on the way; south on LaSalle, past what was once Michael Jordan’s restaurant, shuttered after an unseemly tussle among the principals; west on Illinois; south on Wells; west on Kinzie; and on into the huge fortress of the Merchandise Mart, a commercial building that was long in the hands of the Kennedy family but never acquired any cachet from the association. In the Mart, Lincoln takes the escalator to the second-floor entrance to the elevated-train station. He dips his fare card into the machine and joins a crowd of mostly young, natty professionals waiting for the Brown Line train headed for revived neighborhoods to the north.
Lincoln enjoys the L and considers it one of Chicago’s small wonders. When he was a student with more time in the middle of the day, he sometimes traveled the train just for the sport of it. The view from the L offers an unusual perspective on a city, Lincoln thinks—the track snakes through neighborhoods at about the level of a second-story window, and the train frequently thrusts with astonishing impudence past the living rooms and bedrooms in the buildings along the way. Twice he has spotted people fucking, and once, riding the Red Line just beyond Diversey Parkway, traveling through a gentrified old German neighborhood, he saw a girl, stark naked, with lovely,buoyant breasts and a small wedge of dark pubic hair, standing at a window, facing the tracks. Their eyes met in the split second it took the train to pass, and Lincoln was certain she gestured to him, beckoning, as the train rumbled on. How many years ago was that? Eight, maybe—well before he was married, before he’d even met his wife. In all the years since, he’s never passed that building without looking and imagining.
Today, the Brown Line is running behind, as usual, and by the time a train arrives at the Merchandise Mart station, the
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