Pay and Pay

Chapter 12

THE cold continued through to the end of January and grew worse as February began. The temperatures kept Kevvin indoors except to go to work in the morning and return home at night, and even that was done by subway now, even though his office was only two stops from the station nearest his apartment. Whatever he needed, he bought on his way home as often as possible, and took to picking up extra cigarettes on Friday evenings in order to avoid having to go out on the weekend. He had not even gone out to buy the New York Times for two weeks.

He had spent his time in writing as much as possible, but the results were unsatisfactory. He had continued working from ideas in his leather-bound notebook until he found he had assembled enough from the disparate ideas there for several stories. Then he went ahead and planned each one in turn until he had detailed notes for four stories in all, yet he had not written a single paragraph for any of them. He had not worked on the draft of any story for almost two months. It was not that he lacked focus; planning a story required just as much concentration and effort as sitting down and writing one.

It finally came to him in the middle of February what his problem really was. None of the outlines he had in hand interested him. He knew they were all potentially good, even great stories, but not a single one moved him sufficiently to sit down and begin telling it. He felt no passion for any of them.

Rather than force himself to work, he made himself another cup of coffee. He was not going out for his Times that day, but he had only read one of his newspapers that morning. The local paper still sat on his coffee table. He set the cup down beside the remaining newspaper and picked up the first section.

As always, he worked his way through the paper methodically, section by section and page by page. He read every headline and many whole articles. Most were almost the same as he had read in the national paper earlier over his breakfast. He set the first section to one side and took the next one, local news. Most of the first few pages held articles of little interest to him. They concerned debates in the city council and ongoing battles over development plans.

He read the headline of one short article, but did not go on to read the article itself. He knew from the headline it was a plea from local charities for donations of warm clothing to distribute to the indigent. Kevvin had intended to purchase two or three sets of knitted hats, scarves and gloves to drop into a collection box while doing his Christmas shopping, but it had completely slipped his mind. He made a mental note to look through his old things to see if there was anything suitable he could drop off on his way home from work on Monday.

He turned the page and was surprised to see a photograph of his department head. The caption indicated that she had been appointed the provincial liaison to a municipal committee on transportation infrastructure. Kevvin thought it was certainly good news; if she was positioning herself for a move out of the department, then Kevvin would certainly be interested in interviewing for the vacancy she left. He read the article through, but was disappointed to find there was no hint of her leaving the provincial bureaucracy.

He continued to flip through the local news, reading headlines and skimming through articles. He was far enough through the section that the pages were given over mostly to advertisements with only a few short pieces on traffic accidents, petty crimes, and all the minor news of a big city. He closed the section and turned it over to read the back. What caught his eye was a pencil sketch over an article relegated to the bottom of the page. The picture was not unlike what a police artist might make from the description given by a witness to some crime.

He looked at the short headline over the picture: "Unidentified Body Found." He looked back at the accompanying drawing. It could be anyone, there was so little detail. He read the article, barely two inches in one column.