The Geographer's Library

The Geographer’ s Library
“Ah, work. Of course. I suppose there isn’t all that much work out
here. Naturally, your people must come out here every chance they get, whatwhat?
Escape the smog and so forth.”
“Well, my dad moved back to Indianapolis, where he comes from. He’s
never visited. My mother still lives in New York, though. She comes up every
once in a while.”
“Grand. That’s wonderful. So you’re not completely bereft, right? I’m
glad to hear that.” He leaned back in his chair and started to pick his teeth
with a ballpoint-pen cap while blithely rooting around in his ear with the
pen itself.
“You know,” he said, removing the pen and examining it, “I think perhaps
this week I’d like to write about the differences in cap structure between the
deadly and less deadly Amanita mushrooms. Our Fearless Leader says I’ve
done something like that in the past, but do you know that I checked, and as
it happens I had written about the various kinds of logs that the two types of
Amanita can be found on? Or near. Or at least ...Anyway,my point is that
there is no difference in cap structure, and if you’re going to go mushroom
hunting, you’ve got to have either a trusty field book to hand or someone who
knows what he’s doing. I thought, you know, how many people can really be
bothered to buy an entire field book about mushrooms, so I ought to just
explain the differences myself. Might save a lot of amateur mushroomers a
spot of unsightly stomach trouble, or worse. What do you think of that?”
“Sounds like a great idea, Austell,” I said as cheerily as I could while edging
away from his desk. “Is Art in his office?” I peered around the corner, but
his door was closed.
“Should be, should be. Fearless Leader? Fearless Leader! Minion here to
see you!” He laughed, and Art’s door opened. Art had a set of headphones
draped around his neck and held a Walkman in his left hand. He smiled
thinly and waved thank you to Austell, then ushered me into his office.
He shut the door and held up his Walkman. “Anti-Austell defense mechanism.
I love the guy, you know, but he’s in one of his chatty moods. And we’re
one target short with Nancy gone for the next couple weeks. Just have to wait
it out. Little too early in the morning for him, too. He still talking about the
deadly whatever-the-hell-it’s-called?”
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