Tied to the Tracks Read Online Free

telephone company ready to cut off service, and the reserves of everything from paper clips to videotape alarmingly low. That was the way most small documentary film companies operated: short on everything but panic and adrenaline.
     
    And dedication, Angie reminded herself. It would take that much and more to get them through this oddest of days.
     
    They were, all three of them, in the office at ten o’clock in the morning. Tony was here because he had been sleeping in the storage room since his latest girlfriend kicked him out; at almost fifty he preferred the discomfort of an old army cot to showing up on his mother’s doorstep. Rivera was another matter. Angie couldn’t remember the last time Rivera had been out of bed so early, but there she was, kneeling in front of the ancient fax machine like a supplicant before the pope.
     
    “Come on,” Tony whispered. “Come on, come on, come on.”
     
    “I’m gonna faint,” Rivera said. She ran her hands over the slick black veil of her hair, grasped the sides of her head, and rocked it. Rivera Rosenblum, who had the looks and bearing of a Cleopatra, was wiggling like a puppy.
     
    “Oh, please. You’ve never fainted in your life,” Angie said.
     
    “We’ve never been this hungry before.”
     
    Angie looked at the damp, crumpled cover sheet in her fist and realized that she wasn’t handling this any better than her partners. The phone call late yesterday afternoon from the office of the president of Ogilvie College had been brief and to the point, but she hadn’t quite been able to believe it. Not until the fax machine had sputtered to life right on schedule and the pages began to appear, black on white.
     
    Rivera had her face right up to the machine now and she was reading out loud.
     
    “The board of regents of Ogilvie College . . .”
     
    “Ogilvie, Ogilvie, Ogilvie,” chanted Tony. His long, thin face, normally pale, was flushed with color, and the shock of black hair stood up in spikes. The jitter in his hands said he needed a cigarette, but for the moment adrenaline was holding him steady.
     
    Rivera read: “. . . join me in extending this invitation . . . pleased to offer . . .”
     
    Tony burst into the air like a startled pigeon, both fists pumping the air. “Yeeeee-ha!” Then he grabbed Rivera and they began a crazy polka, bumping into tables and knocking over chairs.
     
    Angie caught the page as it cleared the fax machine. Her eyes ran down the smeared print.
     
    “It’s such a huge commitment.”
     
    She might have pulled out a gun for the reaction she got. Tony and Rivera stopped in mid-spin. They exchanged a look that was not lost on her, and then Rivera marched over and took the sheet out of Angie’s hand. It was at times like these that Angie noticed that she was more than a head shorter than Rivera, who had played center on Smith’s basketball team.
     
    “We’re doing it.”
     
    “Well, of course,” Angie began, but Rivera cut her off as she took the next sheet from the fax machine.
     
    “This is Zula Bragg we’re talking about. The elusive. The ungettable. Complete access—”
     
    “Sufficient access, it says here. Don’t go overboard.”
     
    “It’s national exposure. It’s artistic control.”
     
    Tony thrust his face so close that their noses almost touched. “It’s real money.”
     
    Rivera said, “We can’t pass this up because you don’t want to run into an old boyfriend.”
     
    Tony pulled up short. “Boyfriend?”
     
    Angie took the next page from the machine and turned her back on him to read.
     
    “Now you’re looking for loopholes,” Rivera said.
     
    “No, I’m looking at the budget. It’s . . . generous.”
     
    Tony leaned over her shoulder, his eyes running down the page. “Oh, man,” he said in a low voice. “Oh, man. Who ponies up that kind of money?”
     
    The chair of the English department could pony up that kind of money . But the time wasn’t right to bring up