minutes.”
The Venison Eat Inn and Take Out was in the next block. At twelve-thirty the restaurant was packed with locals and tourists. With some misgivings, I agreed to sit in the bar. While Leo seemed to look longingly at the rows of bottles, he ordered only coffee.
“What's bothering you, Leo?” I demanded after the owner and bartender, Oren Rhodes, had taken my order for fish and chips. “You don't seem like yourself lately.”
Leo made as if to pull out his wallet. “That's funny. I could have sworn I had my ID with me. That'd prove who I am.”
“It's not funny,” I retorted. “It's tough working with someone who goes around like the Grim Reaper.”
“Really?” Leo's weathered face showed a trace of amusement. “I thought your previous ad manager always acted like that until he got rich.”
“Touche.” While working at
The Advocate
, Ed Bronsky had been the eternal pessimist, a pall of gloom in a baggy raincoat. But even when Leo was still drinking, he'd been cheerful. When he began to curb his alcohol intake, he remained chipper if cynical. “You're not Ed. I know that, even if you don't show me your ID. Are you upset about something?”
The question sounded fatuous in my own ears. The fifty-odd years that showed in Leo's face revealed many upsets, along with disappointments, dead ends, and lost causes. Mediocre jobs, a broken marriage, rifts with children, and an uprooting from California to Alpine hadn't seemed to improve Leo's outlook on life. Indeed, it had brought him here, now, drinking black coffee in the darkened bar of a second-class restaurant in a third-rate logging town. I didn't find much consolation in the fact that I was there, too.
“Well,” Leo finally said after lighting a cigarette, “it's not the weather. It's been nice. No rain.”
That piece of news hardly cheered me. But I wastrying to see things through Leo's eyes, which is always futile. “So what is it?”
A brief roar of guffaws and curses erupted from the bar where a half-dozen loggers commiserated among themselves. I glanced up briefly. It occurred to me that the men who occupied the stools were always the same, or at least interchangeable: burly, belligerent, dejected, discouraged—they sat on heavy haunches with their scuffed work shoes planted on the floor as if they were afraid somebody might pull the shabby carpeting out from under them. Of course in a larger sense, somebody already had.
Leo's brown eyes finally met mine and held. “Look, babe,” he began, resurrecting the annoying nickname I realized I hadn't heard in quite a while, “let's say I'm going through kind of a bad patch and let it go at that. I'll snap out of it. I always do. That's one thing about Leo Fulton Walsh—he lands on his feet—even if the rest of him is in the crapper.”
I let out a small, exasperated sigh. “I'm probably going to be able to give you a raise before the year is out.” When at a loss, editor-publisher Lord can fall back on mundane matters such as money.
Leo shook his head. “I'm doing okay. Wait till you see how this back-shop thing goes. Stop worrying that pretty head of yours. It's not your problem.”
I opened my mouth to ask the next obvious question, but Leo stopped me. “It's not Delphine Corson, either. We've kind of cooled it, but that's no big deal.”
Leo's romance with the blonde, buxom owner of Posies Unlimited had been an ongoing affair almost since his arrival in Alpine two years earlier. His ex-wife was remarried, and the initial acrimony seemed to have diminished. As for his three grown children, Leo actually had entertained two of them in the late spring. It seemed that in some ways, the big rips in his life had begun to mend.
But of course I couldn't read Leo's mind or peer into his soul. “Okay,” I said as Oren delivered my lunch order, “I'll back off. I was afraid I'd said or done something to make you mad. This weather makes me cross.”
Leo laughed, a strident and, of late, an
The Venison Eat Inn and Take Out was in the next block. At twelve-thirty the restaurant was packed with locals and tourists. With some misgivings, I agreed to sit in the bar. While Leo seemed to look longingly at the rows of bottles, he ordered only coffee.
“What's bothering you, Leo?” I demanded after the owner and bartender, Oren Rhodes, had taken my order for fish and chips. “You don't seem like yourself lately.”
Leo made as if to pull out his wallet. “That's funny. I could have sworn I had my ID with me. That'd prove who I am.”
“It's not funny,” I retorted. “It's tough working with someone who goes around like the Grim Reaper.”
“Really?” Leo's weathered face showed a trace of amusement. “I thought your previous ad manager always acted like that until he got rich.”
“Touche.” While working at
The Advocate
, Ed Bronsky had been the eternal pessimist, a pall of gloom in a baggy raincoat. But even when Leo was still drinking, he'd been cheerful. When he began to curb his alcohol intake, he remained chipper if cynical. “You're not Ed. I know that, even if you don't show me your ID. Are you upset about something?”
The question sounded fatuous in my own ears. The fifty-odd years that showed in Leo's face revealed many upsets, along with disappointments, dead ends, and lost causes. Mediocre jobs, a broken marriage, rifts with children, and an uprooting from California to Alpine hadn't seemed to improve Leo's outlook on life. Indeed, it had brought him here, now, drinking black coffee in the darkened bar of a second-class restaurant in a third-rate logging town. I didn't find much consolation in the fact that I was there, too.
“Well,” Leo finally said after lighting a cigarette, “it's not the weather. It's been nice. No rain.”
That piece of news hardly cheered me. But I wastrying to see things through Leo's eyes, which is always futile. “So what is it?”
A brief roar of guffaws and curses erupted from the bar where a half-dozen loggers commiserated among themselves. I glanced up briefly. It occurred to me that the men who occupied the stools were always the same, or at least interchangeable: burly, belligerent, dejected, discouraged—they sat on heavy haunches with their scuffed work shoes planted on the floor as if they were afraid somebody might pull the shabby carpeting out from under them. Of course in a larger sense, somebody already had.
Leo's brown eyes finally met mine and held. “Look, babe,” he began, resurrecting the annoying nickname I realized I hadn't heard in quite a while, “let's say I'm going through kind of a bad patch and let it go at that. I'll snap out of it. I always do. That's one thing about Leo Fulton Walsh—he lands on his feet—even if the rest of him is in the crapper.”
I let out a small, exasperated sigh. “I'm probably going to be able to give you a raise before the year is out.” When at a loss, editor-publisher Lord can fall back on mundane matters such as money.
Leo shook his head. “I'm doing okay. Wait till you see how this back-shop thing goes. Stop worrying that pretty head of yours. It's not your problem.”
I opened my mouth to ask the next obvious question, but Leo stopped me. “It's not Delphine Corson, either. We've kind of cooled it, but that's no big deal.”
Leo's romance with the blonde, buxom owner of Posies Unlimited had been an ongoing affair almost since his arrival in Alpine two years earlier. His ex-wife was remarried, and the initial acrimony seemed to have diminished. As for his three grown children, Leo actually had entertained two of them in the late spring. It seemed that in some ways, the big rips in his life had begun to mend.
But of course I couldn't read Leo's mind or peer into his soul. “Okay,” I said as Oren delivered my lunch order, “I'll back off. I was afraid I'd said or done something to make you mad. This weather makes me cross.”
Leo laughed, a strident and, of late, an
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