O'Brien's Desk. Ona Russell

any more. She stood up, walked toward the door, and turned off the light.

      “Sleep well, my friend,” she whispered, and headed shakily toward Dr. Miller’s office.

      5

      Scribbling some notes to himself, Mitchell Dobrinski, a lone figure in The Blade’s still empty newsroom attempted to map out his coverage of the upcoming election. It was only 5 a.m., but as one of the paper’s most dedicated and insomnia-prone reporters, Mitchell was already considering what new angle he could use to breathe life into what was undoubtedly going to be a stale campaign. The fact that he was selected to exclusively cover O’Brien O’Donnell, the Democratic candidate for probate judge, made this task especially difficult. Not because O’Donnell wasn’t newsworthy or even interesting. The man was undeniably both. But his reelection was a foregone conclusion. After all, although he was a Democrat, O’Donnell managed in his previous five terms to attract voters from both parties, and there was no reason to believe he wouldn’t do the same thing again. He was still known for his unique ability to strike a compromise, still considered one of the most intelligent and eloquent men in Toledo, and he still worked tirelessly for social reform. And, especially important to the majority of Toledo’s citizens fed up with the city’s corruption, he was still thought to possess the highest moral standards of any public official. Naturally, he had his share of detractors. That movement several years ago by the Housewives League to remove him from office, for example. And John O’Dwyer’s failed but nevertheless persistent attempts to defame his character. But even those situations had changed in his favor, making O’Donnell currently one of the most popular and trusted men in the city.

      Nevertheless, as a seasoned reporter, Mitchell knew that some careful investigating would bear fruit. Having worked for The Blade for over twelve years, the tough forty-five year old had enough experience to know that no one was beyond reproach. There was always a crack, something overlooked, forgotten, or simply not taken far enough. Not that he enjoyed digging up dirt for its own sake. On the contrary, he considered himself a man of journalistic integrity who believed in giving his readers as unbiased and serious an account as possible. This was why he worked for The Blade rather than The Bee, that noisy gossip rag that passed itself off as a newspaper. But a commitment to objective reporting also meant providing readers with as much information as possible, the good and the bad, and in this case, the possible flaws of a candidate even his own paper was supporting.

      Lighting his fifth Lucky Strike of the morning, Mitchell leaned back on his well-worn swivel chair and tried to refocus, a strategy he often employed when faced with a topic that offered no clear point of entry. Once he had ruled out the most obvious approach, his brain seemed to require some brief diversion before a more subtle route would present itself. Drawing on his cigarette deeply, he glanced aimlessly around the room, registering with relative indifference all the objects that signified it as a place where events became news and the “scoop” was a hallowed word. Typewriters, telephones, paper, and pens, of course, but also prize-winning articles hanging on the walls which announced The Blade’s rich history and respected place among the country’s most notable newspapers. With only slightly more interest, Mitchell recalled how intimately tied to the development of Toledo the paper was, that it was established even before the city was incorporated in 1835. And he remembered too, how it had come to wield a great deal of political influence, as evidenced most strikingly by the fact that almost every candidate it supported not only had won, but done so handily.

      But really, the employees made the whole engine work: news creation, execution, and even consumption. Remove them—the reporters, printers, and Newsies—and most of the things that happened in Toledo, not to mention the world at large, would go unnoticed . . . and unprofited by. Mitchell had often taken solace in this idea, especially when his boss was dissatisfied with something he had written or when rumors surfaced of a change in ownership. He and all those who would shortly take their seats at the line of desks next to his own were needed, and would continue to be so until people lost their insatiable appetite to make sense of the world and their place in it.

      Adrenalin surging, he looked around again at his surroundings. Those telephones and typewriters were not just the machinery of the news, but the tangible objects that connected him to his fellow workers. Of course they assisted reporters technically in carrying out their tasks, but they also symbolically joined them in a common purpose.

      Yet, even as he was reading a kind of brotherly union in the sameness of those objects, Mitchell also noticed just as many items that served to distinguish one employee from another. On each desk sat coffee cups and figurines, flowers, stuffed animals and other such trinkets whose designs reflected something of the distinct personality that occupied the space. What might his own unadorned, functional-looking collection say about him? Frugal, efficient, and undoubtedly a bachelor, for in all of that linearity and absence of color was no sign of the softening influence of a woman. Steady, quiet, and perhaps possessing difficulty with relationships, because unlike nearly everyone else’s, Mitchell’s desk lacked even a single photograph, an absence made even more striking because he considered himself a serious amateur photographer. One of the most common and yet distinguishing objects of all, with their frames of varying shapes, sizes and materials, the photographs were indeed the most visible marker of individuality. They were also, then, the greatest symbolic intrusion into the utopian work life he had been envisioning, because what they brought into that public setting were the cherished loved ones of private life.

      “Private life . . . private life . . . private . . .,” Mitchell repeated excitedly, grateful to leave his vaguely disturbing, philosophical musings behind. Yes, of course. How obvious! The place to begin was not with O’Donnell’s all too consistent record of public service, but with the recent change in his private status—namely his marriage. Certainly marriage in and of itself was never a political liability, but certain details about this particular union were extremely unusual. First, it was surprising that O’Donnell had married at all, seeing that he was fifty-nine and a self-avowed bachelor. Moreover, his wife was thirty years his junior. Marrying someone so young was shocking to say the least, and certainly out of character. Second, the woman he married, Winifred Jackson, had been a clerk in the hotel in which he had lived for several years, not the sort of intellectual or social match one had imagined for such an esteemed individual. Third, O’Donnell invited only his closest friends to the ceremony and told no one else about the event until it was over, strange for a man who over the years had publicly revealed so much of himself. Finally, and perhaps most intriguing of all, was that although a good deal of private speculation occurred, no one had officially pursued the topic. An implicit agreement seemed to have existed that any real exploration was forbidden. Newspapers reported on the marriage, but, as Mitchell recalled, even The Bee treated the subject with kid gloves. Perhaps the time had come to take off those gloves. Yes, this might very well lead to something.

      Halfway through another cigarette, he glanced up at one of the room’s three disproportionally large clocks. Soon his comrades would steal the silence against whose backdrop he had once again circuitously found the beginnings of a path. Before then, he at least wanted to get to the archives to pull his own paper’s articles on the judge’s marriage. They would lack any probing commentary, and if a clue existed, he would have to find it by quite literally reading between the lines. But he needed to start somewhere, and this seemed the most logical place. Besides, this sort of challenge revved his blood. It was for him what made life worth living. Adding one more butt onto the ashtray’s smoldering heap, he rose with his mind on fire, even though his lanky, unfit body had grown cramped and numb. With a fleeting pang of envy, he took one further quick look around the room and headed for the archives.

       A half hour later, he was back at his desk with a thick stack of papers. The articles on O’Donnell’s marriage were his chief objective. However, he decided that it might be worthwhile to review the overall coverage of the judge for a few months preceding and following his betrothal. Refreshing his memory on other matters in O’Donnell’s life, however clear-cut they might appear, would allow him to see the event in a larger context and thus perhaps provide him with some bit of information