Read Spygirl for Free Online Page A

time I was done I agreed with her, and I suspected my paper was terrible too.
    After graduation, Ben and I moved to a Brooklyn neighborhood called Cobble Hill, which was ungentrified enough that we could afford it, and for Ben to get mugged three times (twice with a gun) on our block. Our windows faced brick walls. I went from studying the panopticon and pornography to desk jobs at one and then another major publishing house, miserably ensconced in the ornery minutiae of forms, typing, and routine. I became sullen, and barely noticed my small reserve of hope fading away from my consciousness. I gritted and bore it for several years, perfecting the art of mediocre typing and barely passable message taking.
    It was Eleanor, another editorial drudge and my “pod-mate” (as we called the other overeducated postideologues who populated the plasterboard cubicles in my office), who first inspired my return to the clandestine province of investigation. She and I distracted ourselves from work with rituals like reading our horoscopes every morning off the Yahoo! website. She was a Virgo. One day hers read, “Your fixed star, Mizar, is at its highest point of illumination in the Ursa Major constellation, starting a period of astrological circumstances which foster deep emotional connection and perhaps true love. When he asks, give him your number.”
    That night she met a guy at a bar who talked to her all night about Charles Bukowski and Tom Waits and his work for the Anti-Defamation League, and at work the next day she thought she must be in love. When she met him for coffee the next weekend she found out he had a girlfriend, a hair weave, and acute male patternbalding. Luckily, a week later at an unbearable Upper East Side mixer for single Jewish cat lovers (she was Irish Catholic and a dog person), she met Bill. He was a nice Jewish boy, and they talked all night about how much they hated anything above Twentieth Street and how much they loved latkes, of which there were a lot at the party. Eleanor adjusted to Bill having a cat
and
a dog. Three weeks later, they were in love.
    After they professed their devotion, Bill had to go to Utah, where he was tracking the former cellmate of a guy his firm was investigating. He was a corporate investigator, Eleanor told me, and he was trying to find the prison mate of someone he was investigating for embezzlement and drug-running under the RICO statute. I got daily updates on Bill's progress. Eleanor stopped wanting to read her horoscope, although she let me continue. On his fourth day away, mine read, “Romantic and professional prospects stall, so tread water now. Treat yourself to a great new outfit.” That night I dreamt of sleeping in the back of a van parked outside in the hot Utah summer, and waking in the dead of night to scan the vast, black sky and stars for signs. In the day I would watch and draw clues from unlikely places. Subject wears Adidas sneakers. Subject has a nervous tick in his left upper eyelid. Subject eats four bowls of bran flakes. Subject makes numerous trips to the bathroom, etc. In the pantheon of my publishing experience, it seemed that I was always reading about and talking to people who were doing remarkable things with their lives, and yet I was so far from being one of them.
The Odd Days Club and Other Rituals of the Young PI
    Now I was supposedly living the life I had dreamt about. Bill and Eleanor had moved to London together, and I had his job.
    My second week on the job, I followed everyone onto the fire escape for a smoke. Gus was talking about the Irish tradition of oral history. Gus was short for Gunther. At six feet six, with his head wrapped in a red bandana and a homemade sleeveless Slayer T-shirt stretched across his gut, he was the highest-ranking investigator under Sol and George. He was an expert at database research. I blurted out in my best pseudo-pimp voice, “Yeah, well I can tell you a little about oral history.” It was a joke, but