Nosey

I worked an entire summer at a Jewish newspaper with the obituary writer who had a nasal deformity. He had this slender white growth coming out of his left nostril. It was repulsively distracting, yet incredibly curious to me. Not only didn’t he explain the gnarly growth, he never acknowledged it as if he didn’t know it was there.

I waited all summer and got nothing close to an explanation. I might have quit that job, but hung on figuring he would break in that steamy un-air-conditioned-musty-corner left to write obituaries on typewriters that were missing keys.

He was always a little uneasy about his position at the paper since his wife was Catholic. I used to see him nervously sneaking the Catholic Chronicle into his tattered back pack each week. Now I know I should have used that Catholic Chronicle as bait to blackmail him for the story on his nose. I guess I wasn’t cut out for investigative journalism.