THE CHANGELING

I’m here at my desk 15 minutes early. Actually, I’m 15 minutes late because I usually arrive ½ hour early to check security, turn on the AC, fill the percolator. Today Carl’s first and is making coffee. My desk is ready for me. It has a large clean blotter, modern high intensity swingable lamp, and my right hand guy that is my everything, my Dell! There is a container of sharpened #2 pencils, ball point pens, paper clips, white out. My daily appointments, schedule are on my puter and I go over the list before I do anything else.

The heavy glass office door opens as tra la la, in comes little Pretty Miss Josie. She sashays to the ladies’ room to repair the make-up she just put on before leaving her house. I saw nothing wrong with it, but that is her daily routine. Damn, she’s cute and smart too. Mr. Jason, the Editor in Chief of the Tioga Tattler thinks so too. He tries to be blase’ but his hots show every time she walks past his desk. I don’t blame him. I feel Josie’s pulchritude and warmth from across the room. If I weren’t such a happily married man, I’d probably make a pass at her and so would Mr. Jason.

I’ve got a 10 o’clock appointment with a reporter, Bill London, recently back from Iraq. My files on him are already on my desk, still not looked at. He walks in right on the dot of 10. I take him directly to the interview room where coffee, bagels, cream cheese and do nuts are waiting. Bill’s a gruff looking man with a course small black beard. He has broad shoulders, dark eyes with thick eyebrows. We relax, talk about Iran, Iraq, Israel and then get down to business. Bill opens a large portfolio and starts to lay 8 by 10 glossy photographs over the tables, chairs. I glance and almost gag. I’ve seen many war pictures in my time but none like this. There are no faces, only pieces, severed legs, disemboweled bodies. These are bits and pieces of what were people and he was able to take the pictures, are too tough for me. ‘Please put them away, Bill. Talk to me!’ And he talks, shivers, cries. I cannot comfort him. He is distraught beyond words.

When he leaves, I put together my story that is not about Iraq. It is about Bill and what has happened to him without holding a gun, without stepping on a land mine. His soul seems to have died. To calm myself, I put my story on Mr. Jason’s desk and go outside for a breath of fresh air, look at the sun shining in the sky. And there is Bill, still in the office, close to Josie. They are laughing like two hyenas who haven’t seen each other in years. Josie asks me to take her calls for a while. She’s going out to lunch with Bill. He puts his arm around her waist and they leave.

An hour later Josie calls, asks me to set turn her message machine on. She won’t be back today. ‘Oh, tell Mr. Jason my mother is sick and I had to go home. Thanks.’

I tell him, hand in my story for tomorrow’s paper and will take a better, closer look at Josie tomorrow morning.