That Obituary Summer

This is the first paragraph of my short story, "That Obituary Summer," published in the current issue of Red Fez. The full story is here.

I’D GO IN AT 4:00, climbing stairs past a landing where linotypes clattered behind frosted glass. Another flight took me to the newsroom. I always ate beforehand at a grill down the street, open-faced hamburger and mashed potatoes with dark gravy. I could have taken a supper break, but I ate early because I didn’t want to miss anything. The two-star went to press at midnight. After the papers came up, we sent out for chili mac and beer. Sometimes we’d replate for a late-breaking story, but usually we played whiffle ball among the desks until 1 a.m. Then McCarthy, the night city editor, phoned the foreman to chisel a star off the plate, and the press in the basement rumbled back to life with the one-star. Staffers with families went home, and the rest of us bar-crawled the dark, humid city. It was my first newspaper job, and I wrote almost nothing but little stories about death.