Read Pluto Walks the Earth, Chapter 24: Gold, Frankincense and Sandy
Jaime
There’s this expression about newspapermen having “ink in their veins.” I don’t know about that. But I definitely have ink in my nostrils. When you park your car and walk in the New Mexican’s rear entrance, you don’t hit the Marcy Street front lobby, which looks like a boutique hotel all done up in ruddy ochre, terra cotta and turquoise. You enter a corridor between the newsroom and the printing plant, where the ink hangs in the air like a sweet tar cloud and just curls right up your nose. The press-room guys have that smell in their clothes, their hair, their skin. And, just to make it official, everyday they fashion hats of the day’s newsprint; it’s a union printers’ tradition going back forever. So today as I arrive at work, I have the usual odor in my head, and another one, too.