Michael Malone - Weebly

abroad, without, however, the secretary (Mrs. Troyes),
who had declined their invitation on the basis of other
plans to which the president was not privy.
With Beanie out of town, with Priss out of touch,
with Evelyn behaving in that sly, shy way she had when
she was keeping secrets, Tracy Canopy was feeling a
bit more lonely than she thought was good for her.
Automatically she walked to the phone. The telephone
cord was to her what the television cable was to her
friend Evelyn—an umbilicus joining her to the lifesustaining
world. For on it she daily called a "mayday"
and was rescued from solitude. This morning she held
the receiver like a lover's hand against her cheek. She
spoke to a number of local acquaintances about the fire
and murders, then, still unsatisfied, she began to make
long-distance calls. To her travel agent, to her sister-inlaw,
to Beanie in New York.
Finally she called Bébé Jesus in Miami because she
had been planning to write him to say she wished to buy
the J. Edgar Hoover-in-tin wastepaper basket to go
with her Castro toilet bowl.
He had, amazingly enough, he admitted, already