Read Online Among the Living by Timothy Long - Free Book Online Page B

say it all; they look deep into mine and they smolder. For a stupid second, I see myself leaning over and kissing her, but the absurdity rocks me back. She can’t be interested in an old guy like me; I’m used up and tired. She is young, beautiful; she probably has men knocking down her door.
    The moment stretches. I don’t know what to do, so I place a hand on her shoulder, something I wouldn’t normally do, but I smile to say she is a good friend.
    Then I turn and walk to Leonard’s office. She follows me, shoes cracking across the floor. I sense that something has just passed between us, but I can’t figure out what. Then it dawns on me. Pity. She feels sorry for me, and I fight not to turn around and tell her that I’m fine, but the words die on my lips even as they form. I don’t have to explain myself to anyone.
    Leonard keeps a somewhat tidy office. He mainly handles sports, but he also likes to run longer pieces on crimes that are overlooked by the main media feeds. They aren’t hard to find. Mainstream news programs tend to focus on the sensational pieces, things that sell advertisements. He once wrote a three-part series about families that moved their loved ones into assisted living facilities and abandoned them while raiding their life savings. The piece garnered some national media attention, but ‘Britney Spears’ news quickly squashed it.
    He’s perched behind a giant monitor that looks more like a TV than a computer screen. He is the only one in the office who has one that large. As it turns out, he purchased it for himself. I asked him once why he went to such expense, and he rationalized it by saying he spent half of his day at the office, why shouldn’t he be comfortable?
    He is close to my age but is a barrel-chested outdoorsman with leathery skin from years in the sun. Premature age lines mar his face, making him look older than his forty-six years. They also give him a distinguished look.
    “You got a minute?”
    He stops banging on the keyboard with the first two fingers of both hands, and man does he pound on that thing. I have heard him typing from down the hall. He looks up from his display, eyes hazy behind glasses that are thick with a sheen of oil. Sometimes I want to take them off his face and subject them to a bath of Windex.
    “Sure, what’s up? Hey did you see the Mariners trade today? Man, we need another relief pitcher like we need a hole in the stadium’s retractable roof.”
    “I thought they had that area shored up. What is management thinking?”
    “Hell if I know. They don’t pay me the big bucks to scour the west for new players.”
    “And it is a real shame; remember how well your fantasy football team did last year?” Which was miserable. He somehow ended up with three injured quarterbacks.
    “Sure, dredge up my past and blare it in front of Erin.”
    “Hey, man, I don’t know how the game works or how you can suck at it so bad.” She grins, and Leonard can’t help but grin with her. He is as big as a bear, but at heart he is more of a teddy bear, or so Erin has pointed out to me more than once.
    “I was wondering if your scanner was working. There’s some action up on Capitol Hill at my ex-wife’s apartment. She sounds worried, but her phone cut out and I haven’t been able to get through.”
    He stares at me for a long time, face an expressionless mask. Then he digs out the scanner from behind a stack of paper. He switches it on, and we are greeted with static.
    “It’s been like that since yesterday evening. At first the channels cut in and out, but then they all went dead. I think the police are using a different mode of communication for the time being.”
    “Why would they do that?” Erin beats me to the question.
    “Million dollar question. I have been asking myself the very same, and I got nothing. All I hear are rumors, and even those are barely creditable. Just hints on the web if you know where to look. Videos on YouTube that get yanked