Free The Beginner's Goodbye by Unknown Page A

human being. “ Hell -o,” a man said, too loudly.
    “Bryan Brothers?”
    “Yep.”
    “Gil Bryan?”
    “Nope.”
    “But you have a Gil Bryan.”
    “Yep.”
    “Could I speak to him, please?”
    “He’s out.”
    “Could I leave him a message?”
    “Let me give you his cell.”
    I wrote the number down, but I didn’t try it right away. The conversation with the first guy had worn me out.
    How about if I just sold my house? Put it on the market as a “fixer-upper.” (I’ll say!) Paid somebody to pack my belongings so I wouldn’t have to set foot in the place ever again. Surely there were people you could hire to do that. I would rent a little apartment, fully furnished. If anything happened to that one, I’d rent another.
    The birdwatching book had gone off to Irene, and I was working on one of our vanity titles: George S. Hogan, Sr.’s My War . In the office, we referred to it as War Thirteen . Why was it that so many men viewed their military service as the defining event of their lives? They could have lived ninety years or more, they could have had several marriages and half a dozen children and outstandingly successful careers, but still, if they chose one experience to sum them up, it would be Vietnam, or Korea, or the Normandy invasion. It was especially hard to fathom in the case of Mr. Hogan, because his own particular war sounded downright dull. My best buddy in the barracks was Cy Helm. He was a really fine fellow. You couldn’t ask for a finer fellow than old Helm I always tell folks .
    Apart from inserting a comma after old Helm , I left the text alone. That was our policy with the vanity manuscripts. (Some people didn’t even want the commas added.) I waded through another three pages, and then I rubbed my eyes and stretched and got up to fetch a cup of coffee.
    Charles was playing FreeCell on his computer. He was a stocky, rumpled man with a perennially red face, slightly older than therest of us, and he had his own mysterious schedule that none of us interfered with. Irene seemed to be out of the office, and Peggy was refilling the cream pitcher. “Oh, poor Aaron,” she said when she saw me. “I heard about your ceiling.”
    I sent a malevolent glare toward Nandina’s office door.
    “Who are you hiring to fix it?” she asked.
    “Just this guy.”
    “Because I know a good—”
    “Never mind; it’s all seen to,” I said.
    Then I added, “Thanks anyhow,” because I might have sounded a little abrupt.
    Peggy didn’t seem to take offense. She passed me the cream pitcher, handle first, and asked, “How’s Mr. Hogan’s book coming along?”
    “He’s got this really fine buddy I’m reading about,” I told her. “ Really fine. You know: just a really, really fine buddy.”
    Peggy smiled at me. She was one of those people without any sense of irony. (Well, unless you counted her Little Miss Muffet clothing style, which I sometimes suspected you could count.) Still, it seemed I had to go on now that I was wound up. “It could be worse, I suppose,” I said. “It could be My Years with the City Council . That’s my gold standard.”
    Then Charles weighed in, from his desk across the room. “I’d vote for The Life of an Estate Lawyer , myself,” he called, without taking his gaze from the computer screen.
    “Oh, good point. How could I have overlooked that one?”
    “Remember The Beginner’s Book of Kitchen Remodeling? ” Peggy asked me.
    “Ye-e-es,” I said. It hadn’t stuck in my mind, especially.
    “I was thinking you might find that helpful when you’re dealing with your house repairs.”
    “Whoa!” I said. “Actually consult one of our books?”
    She nodded, solemnly.
    “Good heavens,” I said. “Those books are not meant to be used.”
    “They’re not?”
    “Well, not in any serious way. They’re more like … gestures. Things you give to other people.”
    “But in Kitchen Remodeling they talk about what you should settle with the contractor first,