The Office

THE OFFICE

“Franz Kafka’s work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, and typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers…exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety and absurdity.” (Wikipedia).

On the first day, if Franz Kafka had walked into that office, he would have known exactly what was going on.

It took me five weeks.

The story had a beginning, and an end. In between it made no sense. There was no purpose. No motivation. Confusing, maddening, surrealistic…

How it Began: The Cover Letter

18 January 2020

The Doctor: Editor & Publisher

The Magazine

P.O. Box1856

Tucson, AZ., 85717

Good Afternoon Doctor:

A few months ago, through a phone call and email, you granted permission to reprint material from the Fall, 1979 issue of The Magazine into my book, Dark Flight: The Hunt for the Tucson Ring Meteorite, which is now available on Amazon in kindle and softcover.

During our phone conversation, you mentioned that The Magazine has an interest in articles about medicine and medical-related subjects, and you would be interested in seeing chapters excerpted from my nonfiction book, Dancing with the Dead: The Unnatural History of Tucson, for evaluation and possible publication in a double issue.

I have sent the four relevant chapters: “Riding for the Doctor” (frontier medicine); “The Most Haunted Town” (tuberculosis); “The Lost City” (Tentville/tuberculosis) and “Plague” (the 1918 flu epidemic in Tucson).

Thank you for this opportunity, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Katherine Rambo

_____________________________________________________________________________

The Doctor had requested that the chapters be sent via surface mail.

Surface mail. Old school. I was delighted. Sending manuscripts by computer was complicated because my tech skills are comparable to a Neanderthal confronting a gramophone. I had no reason to suspect that “surface mail” was the first clue that there was going to be trouble.

Established in 1953, “Historians” is an organization of people interested in Southwest history, especially Arizona and Northern Mexico. Individual chapters in fourteen states and eight countries have their own memberships, meetings, rules and bylaws. A chapter director is called a sheriff. In Tucson there are three chapters—the Adobe, Santa Catalina and the Westerners—with almost 700 members. “Historians” publishes the organization’s journal, The Magazine, available to the general public and distributed as well to libraries and universities.

Over the next four years, I received just two phone calls (no emails) from the Doctor, reassuring me that he was still interested in the project. On June 1st, 2024, he called again. In December of 2024 or January of 2025 the chapters would be published in a double issue. It was finally time to meet in person.

Googling the address, I discovered it was in a plaza called Medical Square where the Doctor, retired but working out of his old office, edited TheMagazine.

June 5

I’d lived in Tucson for almost twenty years, and Campbell Avenue was just another street I used to get from one place to another. For the first time, looking for the doctor’s office, I turned east off Campbell into a gracious yet unpretentious self-contained residential historic district I’d had no idea even existed, with seventeen (according to the district’s website) architectural styles built primarily between the 1930s and late 1950s. Even Medical Square built in the early 1950s had a utilitarian charm with eight single-story buildings containing thirty-six units surrounding a large (mostly empty) parking lot.

I knocked on the front door of the doctor’s office, opened it and walked into the waiting room. He wasn’t there. In the middle of the back wall, through the receptionist’s window, a woman with short grey hair stared at me, then turned away and with a French accent, spoke to someone.

The room was about 12 x 12 with dark brown wall-to-wall carpeting and off-white walls. On either side of the front door, Venetian blinds covered two narrow windows.

I sat down in one of two folding metal chairs in front of a heavy-duty plastic table about seven feet long, pushed against the wall between the front door on my left, and on my right, the door to the back office. On either side there was just enough room to open the doors. The table was stacked with books, many old and tattered; papers, folders, maps and documents. There was hardly space for a coffee cup, and none for a computer.

Across the room, above a wood end table between two black faux-leather armchairs, a framed slightly age-toned reproduction of a painting about 4’ x 3’ depicted a desert landscape with flat white sand; a shallow winding channel lined with sparse bushes, a few dusty green Tamarisk trees and in the distance, hazy rugged mountains. As a kid in the early 1960s, traveling with my family around California and Arizona, I’d seen similar prints, usually hanging in motel lobbies. All the paintings had level light-colored sand or dirt. Some had trees. A few had small rock outcrops. Little reddish bushes were common. Wagon ruts were popular. There were always mountains in the distance. All of them—including this one—had the same perspective with flat high-noon light. Skillful. Pretty. But always disturbingly static and lifeless.

I suspected it had been years, probably decades since anything in this room had changed.

The door to the back office opened. The doctor entered, smiling. I stood. We shook hands, then sat down.

Bulky and bald, his skin, including his scalp was mottled with age spots, small flaky circular patches and healed sores. There were band aids behind his left ear, in the crook of his left arm and between his left thumb and forefinger.

He introduced me to the woman: Mrs. Gorgone, his office manager. She smiled, but not with her eyes.

Using a red pen, the doctor had already edited the chapters I’d sent four years ago. We discussed the fundamental differences between the book chapters, and articles in the journal. The book was mine and I could write what I pleased. In the journal, certain personal opinions would need to be re-written or deleted.

I’d opened the chapter called Frontier Medicine: Riding for the Doctor with a quote:

News was brought to town a few days ago of the death of Colonel J.P.T. Carter, late Secretary of Arizona…[He] was a native of West Tennessee and a warm personal friend of President Johnson. He served in the Army of the Cumberland...The disease of which he died, hemoroids, was contracted by the cold, dampness and exposure of camp life during his military career...Only 45 years of age when stricken down; and as much a victim of war as if cut down by the sabre of a foe in the heat of battle. (The Weekly Arizonian, 9 October 1869).

The doctor advised me to remove the quote because, he said, the Colonel’s given cause of death “was not medically accurate.” I said I understood, but that was the point. The quote illustrated perfectly not only the state of medicine, but people’s understanding (and misconceptions) about disease on the Arizona frontier.

He insisted. Take it out. I agreed.

He asked me to write a new chapter on Tucson’s smallpox epidemics. I explained that I had not written one previously because there was no specific connection, personal or emotional between smallpox and Tucson. Unlike tuberculosis, smallpox had not altered the city’s history. The 1918 flu epidemic had fascinating and disturbing Tucson parallels to Covid. Frontier medicine was a topic that most people even now could relate to. On the other hand, I was intrigued. I’d been offered a double-issue. Adding more material was not a problem, and it was a challenge to write a new chapter on something I knew little about.

He told me the issue’s title would be Epidemic Diseases in Tucson. The deadline for turning in the final draft: November 1st.

For almost two hours we chatted, then agreed to meet every Wednesday at 1 p.m.

At home, I read the edited chapters. Some of his corrections and suggestions made sense. Many did not. For the next week I revised, changing some things to conform to the new format while keeping others, confident the Doctor and I could compromise on things too important to change or delete.

The subsequent four meetings were cordial and productive. I’d found online photos and images involving smallpox, and pre-1920 public health posters about tuberculosis and influenza, from which he chose several suitable for the text as well as the front back and covers. At the meetings, I presented revised versions of the texts based on his hand-written notes and verbal suggestions.

At the meeting on June 19, he did not remember maps I’d shown him on June 12, or an article we’d discussed about the TB squatter’s camp called Tentville. He disagreed with names, dates and addresses in the tuberculosis chapter. Neither was he familiar with any of my sources. I suggested we look them up on the internet; information I could have confirmed at home in about ten minutes. Although he used a cell phone to answer calls, he did not have a computer. The only one was in Mrs. Gorgone’s office. She emerged, holding a Smart Phone. We tried, but it was impossible to finesse the information. We gave up. I was not only frustrated but confused. Mrs. Gorgone ran the office using a functional modern desktop computer. But from what she and the Doctor implied, it could not access the Internet.

At home, realizing how much editing the chapters needed to make them suitable for the journal, I cut-and-pasted them as a supplement into the back of the book manuscript, so I could leave the rest of the original manuscript untouched.

On July 24, the Doctor and I had an acrimonious argument about my use of the Tucson Sanborn Fire-Insurance maps, especially the 1919 map which included the area of Tentville. He asked repeatedly, how do you know that map is from 1919? I would indicate pages with the original printed year. He wasn’t convinced. He also stated that details on the map itself were wrong. On a page where the year was faded, tiny and hard to find, and I’d hand-printed the year next to it, he asked, Isn’t that your handwriting?

Issued between 1867 and 1999, the large-scale Sanborn Fire-Insurance maps depict the commercial, industrial and residential sections of approximately 12,000 cities and towns in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The maps are available online. Many state libraries have hard copies. The Library of Congress collection has an estimated 50,000 editions comprising over 700,000 individual sheets. The size, shape and construction of buildings; fire walls, windows and doors, the names and widths of streets; property boundaries, building use, house and block numbers; water mains, fire alarms and fire hydrants…the maps are an invaluable resource for writers, historians, genealogists, preservationists, architects and city planners.

How could the Doctor know so little about them? I answered my own question: because he’d never used the hard copies in the library at the Arizona Historical Society. And without a computer he could not access them online. I wondered if he’d even known they existed before I’d mentioned them.

When documents, maps and news stories I’d found in the AHS library and online websites challenged or contradicted information in his office collection, or his personal beliefs, he insisted they were wrong. All of them.

Located outside the city limits, Tentville was squalid, unpaved, shunned by most people and ignored by city government. At its height between the late 1890s and early 1920s, the camp held as many as 500 people, most of them indigent. According to one source, there was a privy behind each tent: unlikely because most people pitched their tent wherever they could find space. Towards the end of the camp’s existence, along the edges where people could rent pre-fab tent “houses,” there were no doubt privies. But for most of Tentville’s other residents, hygiene was difficult and organized sanitation almost non-existent.

At night, the only light came from candles and lanterns. For the most basic necessities, residents depended on local charities. According to the Sanborn maps, eyewitness accounts, city reports and newspaper stories, there was no phone service. No electricity or piped city water.

The Doctor disputed this, insisting the camp had streets. City services. Access to a post office, although—confirmed by city directories and the Sanborn maps—during Tentville’s existence, Tucson had no branch offices and the main office was downtown, over two miles from camp. His contention that the camp had electricity, phones and city water depended on two pieces of evidence: the first, that a public school near the camp’s northern edge had all three. The second: an underexposed 2  1/2 ”x 4” snapshot, undated but taken around 1920, showing a plowed field and in the distance a wood building next to a pole holding what could have been phone or telegraph wires.

He wanted news photos of the camp. I said I’d been searching for ten years and knew for certain there weren’t any. He said I was lazy, “ignoring research” and not looking hard enough.

I’d described how rain would turn the unpaved camp into a muddy morass. He told me to take that out because it was “speculative” and “You weren’t there.”

Tucson’s first motorized taxi service, established in 1912, used cars with tops that could be raised and pushed back. I stated that in bad weather, drivers who created an enclosed space by lowering the tops and rolling up the windows might have been reluctant to transport people with TB to Tentville.

According to the Doctor, that was also “speculation” because, again, “You weren’t there."

I’d found maps showing sections of land, each section printed with the date it had been annexed by the city. Until the mid-1920s, Tentville was outside the city limits. The Doctor stated, repeatedly, emphatically, that Tentville had always been within the city limits.

He insisted that I remove all “speculative” descriptions of how Tentville residents lived and died, including their names, ages, professions and hometowns.

I countered by explaining that the information was essential in giving the residents back their humanity. Their dignity. And allowing readers not only to empathize, but to imagine living in that situation.

I asked the Doctor if he could imagine what the camp was like. He said no.

Mrs. Gorgone interrupted, ordering, Take yourself out of Tentville.

August 21

The meeting began with the Doctor’s agitated litany of complaints and grievances.

In the chapter on smallpox, I had used a quote from Jennifer Lee Carell’s book, The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox. Describing the horrific death of England’s Queen Mary II in 1694, Carrell used the word “shit.” The Doctor stated the word could not be used and that I should change it to “defecate.”

To keep the peace, I agreed.

The next problem was newspapers.

Over the past few weeks, the Doctor and Mrs. Gorgone had insisted that I pay for a membership with Newspapers.com., allegedly the internet’s largest online archive, claiming to have over one million pages from newspapers issued between the 1700s and 2000s. If I didn’t subscribe, I was “lazy” and “ignoring research.”

I explained, again, that I’d investigated, then rejected the idea years ago because Newspapers.com. is owned by the monolithic, voracious Ancestry.com, notorious for acquiring free-use public history and genealogy websites, and then restricting access to Ancestry.com’s paid subscribers.

Subscribing requires payment by credit card. Canceling a membership can be extremely difficult, and former members commenting on public websites that could collectively be titled, Ancestry.com, Burn in Hell, have accused the company of extracting money from subscriber’s accounts even after cancellations have allegedly been successful.

The Doctor and Mrs. Gorgone persisted. My response: because I could not subscribe to Newspapers.com without buying Ancestry.com’s entire package—all of their subsidiary websites—I would not join because (1). I detested Ancestry.com. (2). In the past thirteen years, writing Dancing with the Dead required research through over 150 years of newspapers, so as far as the chapters were concerned, I knew what existed and what did not. (3). While only members of Newspapers.com had access to complete articles, partials consisting of a few lines were available for free. (4). When the site had multiple sections of the same article, I could scroll and click back and forth until I had enough text to cut and literally paste by hand a complete paragraph. When I needed entire articles, I would spend a pleasant few hours in the library at the Arizona Historical Society, because the library had a subscription to Newspapers.com., as well as complete runs of newspapers on microfilm. Printing news articles from one of the library’s vintage whirring clunking machines cost only a few dollars.

This enraged the Doctor and Mrs. Gorgone, who were adamant that I could only research newspapers efficiently through Newspapers.com, at home.

My work, she ranted, was trash. Also, “crap”. Because of my “defiance,” my “stubbornness,” I was wasting the Doctor’s time. He’d already wasted too much time editing the chapters, inconveniencing other authors and putting The Magazine’s publication behind schedule.

I suggested that if he hadn’t asked me to write the new chapter on smallpox, which required weeks of extra work, we wouldn’t have that problem.

He stated that my research was worthless. Inaccurate. Inadequate. I was telling “lies.” According to Mrs. Gorgone, I was writing fiction. In the letter I’d sent to the Doctor in January, 2020, I’d mentioned that the chapters were from Dancing with the Dead. Today, Mrs. Gorgone accused me of being deceptive; of hiding that information and using The Magazine as a “stepping stone” to having the book published.

What, I asked, is wrong with that? Authors expand journal articles into books. Books are abridged and summarized as journal articles.

Mrs. Gorgone’s response: during their first meeting with the “Executive Committee” to discuss my work, someone warned her and the Doctor, “Don’t work with Katherine Rambo. She’s trouble.” Mrs. Gorgone added that the Committee had been giving the Doctor a hard time, telling him to get rid of me.

I was shocked. Shaken. Could the informer be someone from my nonfiction writers group? They were the only people who had read and critiqued the chapters from Dancing with the Dead. I’d been with the group for almost ten years. We were friends. I trusted them.

I asked who the person was. Mrs. Gorgone said I did not deserve to know. She challenged me to explain why I wanted to get published. Not just in The Magazine, but in general. I gave what I thought was a logical explanation. I’m a writer. Writer’s want to be published.

The Doctor changed the subject. At the first meeting, he’d told me that November 1st was the deadline for turning in my final revisions. Now it was the first week of September, and if the revisions were not completed to his satisfaction, the issue with my work would probably not appear until June or July of 2025.

What? Why? Now the deadline was just ten days away. Unfair. Unreasonable. Impossible…

Bullied at school, dealing at home with my mother’s verbal and emotional abuse, I’d developed survival tactics, including how to choose my battles. If possible, just talk. Calmly. Placate. If necessary, confront. Or not react at all. Just walk away.

But I had no idea how to deal with this, because it was outside my experience; senseless, malicious, vitriolic baseless insults and accusations from two older, allegedly professional adults who wanted to publish my work.

At the end of the meeting, the Doctor and I stood. Smiling, he offered his fist. So we fist-bumped.

I sat in my car, shaking. Light-headed. Heart thudding. For the next 24-hours, I hardly slept. Then, as often happens in a crisis, something inside me shifted. Grew smaller. Tighter. Colder. My goal: publication. As long as that was still possible, I would endure.

Revising the chapters, I left “shit” unchanged.

Mrs. Gorgone had challenged me to justify why I wanted to be published. A few days later I emailed what I believed to be a logical response: asking me that question was like asking an artist why they wanted their worked displayed, or why a musician wanted their music heard. I’m a writer. I want to be published.

September 4

I was apprehensive, but the meeting went well until Mrs. Gorgone emerged from the back office, snarled, I want to talk to you, then banged a chair on the floor, sat down and waved my email in my face. She was outraged. Insulted, apparently because she is a musician and I had used that particular word. “Musician.” I asked to see the email with the intent of discussing it rationally. She refused. I reached for the email. She snatched it away and flourished it behind her, smirking. I said it was mine and I had a right to see it. She said I didn’t.

I accused her of being abusive.

She said I was the one being abusive.

The Doctor broke in, telling me that my work was inaccurate. Lies (also, “Godamned lies” and “bullshit). My research, sloppy. Inadequate. Unpublishable.

I finally raised my voice. Four years ago the chapters had not been “unpublishable.” In the first four meetings, they had not been “unpublishable.” The main text of each chapter had not changed. So why—

The Doctor interrupted in a tirade about the word “shit,” accusing me of trying to “sneak it past him.” I told him I’d left it in because I was conflicted. I respect Ms. Carrell’s work and I suspect I know why she chose that word. It was shocking. Evocative. Powerful. To use “defecate” was to lose the effectiveness of the language, and the image. Could removing “shit” and substituting “defecate” be considered a form of censorship?

Mrs. Gorgone accused me of never doing what I was told, and never making changes the Doctor wanted. She threatened to show my email to the Executive Committee, and that unless I stopped “challenging” the Doctor, they would not publish the chapters. And because I was such a terrible writer, no one would ever publish my work.

Finally provoked into openly expressing my feelings (something I had sworn never to do, growing up with my emotionally volatile mother) I slammed the chapters once on the table. I paced. Gestured. After four years….

I told Mrs. Gorgone she was sadistic. Spiteful. Vindictive.

She smiled.

I realized that she wanted this. She enjoyed provoking me into a spital-emitting rage. For weeks I’d tried being honest, forthright, logical. It didn’t work because I was dealing with two people whose behavior made no sense. Staring down Mrs. Gorgone, into that cold smile and slightly squinty glittering eyes, I realized that she was in complete control, not only of the office, but the Doctor, whom I suspected might be in the early stages of dementia. He could be friendly, even cheerful—until Mrs. Gorgone’s rants and verbal abuse triggered him.

At home, I gave in and changed shit to defecate in square brackets.. It was trivial, and as long as I still had a chance to get published, I could put up with all the bad craziness.

When I vented to my friend, the Wiseman of Sandario Road, he clarified the situation perfectly. The Doctor did not have a computer. He’d requested the original chapters be sent by surface mail. Uncompromising, increasingly angry, he rejected facts, data, history conflicting with what he already believed. The only truth, the only non-threatening reality existed in the office, in the books, maps and documents piled on the table and crammed into the hallway shelves. He’d turned the office into a room with no exit, and locked himself in with Mrs. Gorgone.

September 11

When I arrived, the Doctor was in the backroom. I sat down, looked through the most recent Magazine, and paused at the title page. The hierarchy was confusing. But it appeared that the parent organization, the Historians, had nine “officers” chosen from Tucson’s three independent chapters. The Doctor was “Deputy Sheriff” and “Magazine editor.” Mrs. Gorgone was “Trail Boss” and “Sales.” They also belonged to the six-member Editorial Board. But Mrs. Gorgone’s threats of retribution by a sinister omnipotent “Executive Committee” was a shameless bare-faced lie, because it didn’t exist.

The meeting began when the Doctor told me that if “shit” remained, that issue of The Magazine could never be published. I pointed out that it had been changed. He again accused me of trying to “sneak” it past him, and that I would pull the same trick again. I told him I would never do that, and again explained why I had been hesitant to make the change. He said he didn’t believe me. I was a liar. My explanation was “bullshit.” By this time he was yelling, demanding that I “retract my false accusation” accusing him of censorship, which I had never done. For the rest of the meeting, he continued demanding that I “retract” and “apologize.”

Mrs. Gorgone ordered me to “write only what he tells you to” and that the emotions I had expressed at the previous meeting were “lies.” She laughed, waving her arms, mimicking my gestures, mocking what I had said. She also stated that I had an inferiority complex, and the only reason I wanted to be published was to “impress someone.” All their other writers were “nice,” and in the office they enjoyed “laughing and making maps.” Although the Doctor agreed with everything she said, several times he shouted at her, “Sybil, shut up!”

Embedded in her rant, no doubt unintentionally, there was also a hint that I was not the only writer with whom they were having trouble, which meshed with the Doctor’s remark during our first meeting that the prior four issues had been “nightmares” because writers had, on their own time, gone to the journal’s printer to complain, work on, make changes to…something which the Doctor had not explained.

Mrs. Gorgone told me the chapters would likely not be published (if at all) until 2026. The Executive Committee might ask another author to write a new chapter on tuberculosis and, “It would be magnificent.”

2026? I’d already waited four years. Six years? Not a chance.

I got as far as telling them There is no Executive Committee—when she interrupted, waving at me with the back of both hands, ordering, Leave now. Go. Go!

I told them that while they controlled what happened in the office, they did not control me. I opened the front door and jerked my chin at the outside. That was my world, and I did what I wanted.

Mrs. Gorgone said, “I consider that a threat. Maybe I should call the police.”

I told her I’d have no problem if she did.

At home, for some reason holding on to the forlorn hope that logic and rational discussion might prevail, I wrote a polite dispassionate cover letter and photocopied the Tentville chapter with the Doctor’s scrawled red-ink revisions. On each photocopied page I stapled another page detailing paragraph-by paragraph why I disagreed with his conclusions, and mailed the packet in a white 9x12 envelope.

Sep. 27 at 6:34 a.m.

From: The Doctor

Your schedule permitting. You are invited to a status review at my office at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, October 2, 2024.

Sept. 27 at 11:51 a.m.

From: Katherine

Thank you for the update. The implication is that I am being terminated and that the chapters have been rejected. If so, especially after waiting four years for this opportunity, this is profoundly disappointing. If so, then an extended face-to-face meeting is not required and I would be pleased to pick up my material at your office. However, if the meeting involves the continuation of the project, please advise and confirm.

Sept. 28 at 4:40 P.M.

From: Katherine

I realized that on Wednesday, I already have something scheduled: a donation of furniture to “Habitat for Humanity” and the window is between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. I won’t know for sure until they call that morning. Would it be feasible to meet on Thursday or Friday?

Sept. 30 at 3:01

From: The Doctor

On Friday September 27, 2024, I invited you to participate in a status review at 1 p.m. on Wednesday October 2, 2024, at my office. On Saturday, September 28, 2024, you rejected said invitation out of hand. And then, apparently having reconsidered your quick rejection, you requested that a status review be scheduled for a subsequent date. You will be notified regarding when such a rescheduled status review can be held at a future date.

Sept. 30 at 3:28 P.M.

From: Katherine

I did not “reject” the meeting. As I explained, I had already scheduled a donation pick-up with Habitat for Humanity. If the project is over, then a “status review” is not necessary. I will pick up the material at the office, and consider the matter closed.

1 October at 2:10 p.m.

From: The Doctor

The email which you sent to me at 3:28 p.m. on September 30, 2024, makes a statement that does not conform to reality, perhaps deliberately so. You agree that, at 6:34 a.m. on September 27, 2024, I emailed an invitation to a status review to take place at my office at 1:00 p.m. on October 2, 2024, which you rejected. Your misrepresentation of the truth is very disappointing. The material will be available for collection at my office on Wednesday, October 9, 2024, at 1 p.m.

1 October at 4:26 p.m.

To: The Doctor

Phrases in your email today (“…Does not correspond to reality, perhaps deliberately so…misrepresentation of the truth…”) leaves no room for rational discussion.

I am under the impression that you do not have a personal computer, and that the only computers in the office are used by Mrs. Gorgone. And yet the emails I receive have your name on them. Who actually wrote them? Did you dictate them to her ? Did you actually read any of my emails, or does she control all the electronic communication?

8 October at 3:35 p.m.

From: The Doctor

I have reviewed the email which you sent to me at 4:26 p.m. on October 1, 2024. It contains an impressive array of self-discrediting, self-disparaging, and self-serving discrepancies, distortions, excuses and fantasies.

On October 9 when I picked up the material, I realized two items were missing: the clear-cover folder with the four chapters I had given the Doctor on September 4, and the white envelope sent via surface mail on September 19. I asked what happened to them. The Doctor stated he’d been too busy working on The Magazine to look for them. He was annoyed. In her den, Mrs. Gorgone scowled. Because I did not want to provoke an argument, which would have been pointless anyway, I left.

______________________________________________________________________

11 October at 11:50 a.m.

To: The Doctor

I would be interested to know if you have located the clear-cover blue binder with the four chapters I gave to the Doctor. Also, the packet I sent on September 19. They are my property, and because the project was, at your request, terminated as of October 9, I would deeply appreciate having them returned.

12 October at 4:03 p.m.

From: The Doctor

In regard to your query of October 11, I have been unable to locate the items which you mentioned. When you came to my office on October 9 you gave me the impression that you were satisfied that I had returned all of your documents. It should also be noted that I spent many hours researching contagious diseases for the purpose of providing commentary, suggestions, editorial criticism, etc. All of the foregoing should be regarded as my property and are not available for use without my prior authorization.

12 October at 6 p.m.

From: Katherine Rambo

I was never satisfied that I received all the material, as I stated on October 9 when I picked up what I thought was all of it, and then returned minutes later from the parking lot after discovering the binder and the packet were missing. I asked the Doctor where it was and he stated that he “had not had time to look for it.” I assume the binder and the packet have been discarded. Doctor, I agree that you no doubt “spent many hours researching contagious diseases for the purpose of…” but those were on your own time for your own projects and have no connection and nothing to do with the chapters I submitted, which are all my own work. And I have twelve years of computer print-outs with dates, research material and early version of the complete manuscript to prove it. You edited the chapters. Made suggestions in red ink about the text. You wrote none of it. And when you and Mrs. Gorgone, in writing, rejected my work for publication in The Magazine , you gave up any claim to my work because there was no contract. The material was never published or copyrighted by the magazine.

______________________________________________________________

A week later I wrote a straightforward, dispassionate report; added it to the photocopied letters, emails and the Doctor’s scrawled red ink revisions of the Tentville chapters with the same sequence of stapled pages, and sent three identical packets to the chief officers (“Deputies”) of The Magazine’s independent Tucson chapters .None of them responded. But then, I hadn’t expected them to. They’d known the Doctor and Mrs. Gorgone for years. They were friends. Whatever happened after the packets had been received; how the Deputies reacted, and if they’d even spoken to the Doctor and Mrs. Gorgone, or simply tossed the packets in the trash, was not my problem.

To find closure, I’d done what I needed to. The Story was out there. Like I’d told them at the office, I was a writer. Outside the office, they had no control over me, or what I wrote. At the end, I’d achieved what all true writers need: The Last Word.