Read 1 Breakfast at Madeline's for Free Online Page B

"It's... extremely in teresting," I said.
    "No shit?"
    " Absolutely no shit. I mean, wow ." I pumped my fist with fake enthusiasm.
    Rob laughed and high-fived me, looking every bit as excited as I was pretending to be. "Far fuckin' out! Hurray for my man Penn!" I just stood there smiling nervously, bobbing my head up and down. "So what did the guy write about?" Rob continued.
    "Man, what didn't he write about? I'll give you the whole scoop after I finish reading."
    "Okay, dude, but hurry up. We gotta turn his stuff into an exhibit already, get rid of all this crap," Rob said, waving at the pointillist monstrosities on the walls.
    "I think fat people are sexy," Marcie said, turning to me. She was wearing a thin white muscle shirt that showed her nipples off nicely. "Don't you?"
    It was hard to answer her with my tongue hanging out.
    "Seriously," Rob broke in, "Madeline gave it the okay. And since we w ant to hold the memorial on Sun day, and we'd like to have The Penn's stuff up on the wall by then, we'll even do the work. You know, read it and decide what to put up."
    Sure, I could just pict ure it. A hundred different ver sions of that frigging preface lining the wall s . What a horrible mockery of a man's life.
    "I'll think about it," I lied, and got the hell out of there.
     
    But even after I made it outside, Marcie's scent stayed with me—so much so that when Judy Demarest waved to me, I felt guilty. Besides being the editor of the Daily Saratogian, Judy is also my wife's best buddy and my children's favorite babysitter. "Hey, Judy, how's it going?" I chirped.
    "Big story." Judy always spoke in short clipped phrases, trying to soun d like a tough, hard-boiled edi tor. But anyone who knew about her babysitting prowess, as well as her passionate involvement in the Literacy Volunteers of Saratoga—she was their chief fundraiser and chairp erson of their executive board— knew that in reality Judy had only been boiled for three minutes, at most. "Guy stole forty-six cans of whipped cream from Price Chopper. Sniffed the gas to get high."
    "Well now, that is a big story. Definitely page one."
    She shrugged. "Best we got so far. Unless you have something better."
    I started to give her a return shrug, but then my shoulders froze. I did have something better.
    A hundred versions of that preface on Madeline's walls would be grot esque ... but how about publish ing just one version in the Daily Saratogian?
    And then, boom, it finally hit me. That's what this is all about. This is why Donald Penn threw me his key!
    He knew his heart was attacking him and he sensed he was about to die. So with his last living breath and his last desperate l urch toward my feet, he was beg ging me to please for G od's sake get him published. Be cause like myself and every other poor sucker of a writer who ever picke d up a pen or sat down at a key board, he believed that if he was published, he would never really die.
    He'd be immortal.
    If I could get Judy to go for it, Donald Penn would finally, after thirty long hard years of writing, become what he had always dreamed of: a real honest to God published writer . Right there in the same ballpark with Shakespeare and all the rest of the big guys.
    No wonder Penn came to me when he was dying. I was undoubtedly his best contact in the publishing world. Hell, his only contact.
    His only hope.
    Nervously, my breath getting shallow, I asked Judy if she'd like to publish an excerpt of Penn's work. I of fered her exclusive first rights, trying to make it sound like I was doing her a big favor.
    To my astonishment, she jumped at the chance. "Sure. Let's do it," she agreed.
    I was so thrilled and relieved at how easy it had been, I could hardly hear her as she continued on. I was flashing back to the first time I was published (a "Letter to the Editor" for McGovern in my high school paper).
    "After all," Judy was saying, "man was a celeb. They even gave him free coffee at City Hall every morning."
    I tried