Content with the Mysterious

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Ken Shaw stared at the manuscript without really seeing it. The lines were gray blurs, a pattern of irregular stripes. He knew what it said, though; he’d read the march of words beneath his wife’s byline.

“You’ll love it,” she said. “It’s brilliant,” she said. And he’d had no reason not to believe her. Most of what Lissa wrote, if not brilliant, was at least very good: sharp, cogent, witty. This, however—he grimaced—this was arrogant, self-congratulatory, and sarcastic. He imagined telling her that. Not pretty. He’d critiqued her before, of course, edited her prose. That was his job. But, at the moment, he didn’t feel like editing, he felt like doing a hatchet job.

Sighing, Ken rolled his chair across the anti-static carpet and over to the office window. He was people-watching and contemplating taking a walk down the Embarcadero when he saw her charging through the manicured courtyard four stories below. She moved like a tornado with a fix on a trailer park. She always did. It was one of the things he loved about her. She researched her articles the same way, flying in, shredding, reducing the subject to matchsticks that could be easily vacuumed up—neat, tidy, and looking nothing like the original item.

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