Read It Happened One Knife for Free Online Page B

wasn’t exactly a Disneyland attraction, either.”
    “I don’t know. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride?”
    She laughed, in spite of herself. “Peter Pan’s Flight, I think.”
    “Star Tours.”
    Sharon laughed again, her giggle picking up speed now. It took her a moment or two to croak out, “Haunted Mansion.”
    “Oh, thanks a lot!”
    Sharon inexplicably dissolved into hysterics, and to be honest, I laughed for a while, too. Nothing either of us had said had been that funny, but it was one of those moments between couples. Ex-couples. People who used to be couples. You know.
    When she had recovered, Sharon put her hand over mine. “This is what I mean. We’re still good together.”
    I raised an eyebrow. “I never said we weren’t. You know, the divorce wasn’t my idea.”
    “You filed the papers,” she reminded me.
    “I was convinced you’d be happier . . . elsewhere. Was I wrong?”
    “I don’t know anymore,” Sharon said, and suddenly, I didn’t know, either.
    I headed back to the theatre to get ready for the night’s showings, and to interview a kid about joining our cockeyed team of optimists at Comedy Tonight. I’d been meaning to hire an extra person for some time, and with the reopening, this seemed like the logical moment. I had run a help wanted ad in the Press-Tribune , and got one call from a kid named Jonathan Goodwin.
    Sophie and Anthony were fine at what they did, but by definition, there were only two of them. Anthony was already in college; he’d be around a couple more years at most, and Sophie, now a high school senior, would be going off to college next September, most likely an all-female one, in the mood she was currently exhibiting. And unless she followed Anthony to Rutgers, it would probably prohibit commuting to work at Comedy Tonight. As if her education were more important than her part-time job.
    As it stood, both Sophie and Anthony worked five nights a week, including weekends. That meant I had three days (Friday to Sunday) with both of them in the theatre, and four days when the “staff” consisted of myself and one other person. Even in an operation as small as Comedy Tonight, that was too small a crew. I needed a swing person, and if the interview worked out, that would be Jonathan Goodwin.
    Jonathan, a sixteen-year-old sophomore at Midland Heights High School, had sounded so breathless on the phone (after I’d seen his e-mail application) that I worried for his level of excitement at the interview. He showed up a half hour early, a tall, skinny kid with a neck like a giraffe, dressed in a Monty Python shirt and a pair of shorts that hung down almost to his ankles, making me wonder if they still qualified as shorts. He also wore a pair of flip-flops normally associated with the area we Jerseyans call “down the shore.”
    “You always get this dressed up for business situations?” I asked him.
    “I don’t know,” Jonathan said, head down. “This is my first job interview.”
    Oh, geez. Now the kid’s whole life of employment expectations was riding on my reaction. I’d have to be nice to him, something that usually makes me break out in a rash. “So, you’ve never had a job before?”
    He looked up with some anxiety, and shook his head. “Raking leaves for my mom,” he said. “Mowing the lawn.”
    “Guess that doesn’t really count, huh?”
    Jonathan hung his head again. “I guess not.”
    “You really need the money?” Maybe the kid’s mom was pushing him to get a job and he really didn’t want to, so he was acting like someone who’d rather be in front of his PlayStation.
    “No,” he said.
    A heck of a conversationalist, too.
    Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Why do you want the job, Jonathan?” I asked.
    He didn’t hesitate. “I love comedy,” he said without inflection.
    My eyes narrowed. “You mean like Old School ? Knocked Up ? Stuff like that?”
    Jonathan looked startled. “Well, yeah, I guess,” he said. “But really I like