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

what?”
    Front-Page shrugs. “From exercising irony. You say something is this way—the way you want it to be—then you knock wood to make sure it keeps on being that way.”
    “You very superstitious?” Bills asks.
    Front-Page seems to be settling into his chair more now, though he keeps flexing his mouth, opening it wide like he’s in pain. “No more than the next guy,” he says.
    “Tell us about Betty,” Bills says to him.
    Front-Page McGuffin visibly winces. He closes his eyes and shakes his head slowly. “She’s not here anymore, Bills … and I miss her. I surely do miss her.”
    “I know you do,” Bills says. “Tell us about the time she was in the hospital. Is that when the superstitions started?”
    “I guess so.”
    “What did you do?” Jack Fedogan asks, crouching down by the table. He’s checked the counter to make sure nobody’s waiting for drinks. In the background, the Marsalis father-and-son team is playing ‘Sweet Lorraine’.
    “She had a tumour.”
    “I know that,” Bills says. “Tell us how the superstitions started.”
    “Number 13,” Front-Page says. “They wanted to put her in Room 13. I remember now. That’s when it started.”
    “You weren’t superstitious before then?” Jim asks.
    “They—the doctors—they told me wasn’t anything going to help Betty now. Then this other one, nice guy, he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says to me, ‘You can try praying’.” Front-Page leans onto the table, knocks it a couple of times, and continues.
    “So I tell him I’m not a religious man. Wouldn’t know how to even begin talking to God … even if I thought he did exist. And this guy, he looks at me with this sad smile, and he says to me, ‘That’s all you have now, Mr. McGuffin. That’s all your wife has.’ He says to me, ‘Whyn’t you give it a try?’
    “So, that night—the first night she was in hospital—I got down on my knees in the bedroom, right alongside her side of the bed, and I prayed. I cried like a baby—and that’s something else I don’t do—and I prayed.” He raps the table and shifts his weight in the chair, looking like he’s uncomfortable.
    “Next day, I go into the hospital and they tell me Betty’s had a good night. But they tell me they’re moving her into another room.” He looks across at Bills and gives a single nod. “Room 13.
    “‘I take it you’re not superstitious, Mr. McGuffin?’ this nurse says to me, all sweetness and light. Anyway, I think to myself for a minute; and I think about how Betty has had a better night and how—maybe coincidentally, but hell, who knows?—how I did all that praying. And I wonder if maybe it did have an effect. And if it did, how maybe I should try to avoid anything that could work against her. So I say to the nurse that I don’t want Betty in Room 13.”
    “What did they say?”
    Front-Page looks aside at Edgar and says, “They did it. They found her another room. They weren’t happy about it, but they found her another room.”
    Edgar snorts a Way to go! snort, chuckles and pats Front-Page on the hand, which feels very cold just lying there on the table.
    “Then,” Front-Page says, sounding kind of tired, “everything started to get really intense.
    “I went home and started to think about all the little superstitions and sayings folks use to get them through one day into the next. Totems and talismans they employed to keep them well and happy.”
    Suddenly remembering the pitcher, Jack gets to his feet and pours beer into the glasses.
    Watching the beer froth up, Front-Page says, “I knew a few but I wondered how many there really were … wondered if I really went to town on these things that maybe Betty would be … “ He lets his voice trail off and takes a long slug of beer.
    “So,” he says, setting the glass back on the table, “I went down to the library and I read up on them. You wouldn’t believe how many books there are on superstition.” He takes hold of