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editor-­in-­chief of the Philadelphia Intelligencer had decided I was a tasty hors d’oeuvre fresh off the barbie.
    I must have bristled.
    â€œI’m not criticizing,” he said, continuing to examine me over the rim of his champagne flute. “Far from it. In fact, where I come from, we’d call you a smoke show.”
    â€œA—?”
    So far, every time I’d encountered him, Gus Hardwicke had managed to get me off balance and keep me there. He did it, I knew, because he recognized I was too polite to fight back. He took advantage of my good manners.
    Tartly, I said, “Is that a compliment in Australia?”
    â€œSmokin’ hot? Of course it’s a compliment.”
    Hardwicke wore a sharp jacket—­probably Ermenegildo Zegna, if I had to guess, very expensive, but worn casually over jeans and a button-­down shirt. He was very much the hip Aussie.
    He said, “I just looked in on an invention called an eco-­toilet—­earth-­friendly, I’m told. There was a sign inside, ‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down . ’ Can you tell me what that means, precisely? I can’t imagine.”
    I was fairly certain he was taunting me, and I wasn’t falling into the trap. “I haven’t the faintest notion. Some organic-­living policy, perhaps?”
    â€œPerhaps.” Still eyeing me with a calculating smile, he said, “You were very brave to choose those shoes, knowing you were going to be around cows.”
    â€œThe trick to cows is keeping your distance,” I said, and returned my attention to the party. At least, when I wasn’t looking at him, I could pretend he wasn’t ogling me. “Don’t you have cows in the land Down Under?”
    â€œSheep. We have sheep in Australia. Last I was there, anyway.” He stopped a passing waiter and scooped a glass of champagne off the silver tray. He handed the glass to me. “Drink up, luv. The bubbly’s a bloody good drop.”
    In my short career as a journalist, I had never been called “luv” by a superior. But the Philadelphia Intelligencer had been in a state of flux since the death of its owner, a retired tycoon who had treated the newspaper like one of his many expensive hobbies—­with lax management and only periodic supervision. Now the new owners were taking a firmer hand. They had hired a new editor—­Gus, once a slacker surfer who became a brash, journalistic buccaneer who cut his teeth on less-­reputable Australian newspapers owned by his family before escaping to Canada after a rumored scandal that his powerful father had hushed up. Finding immediate work in Canadian tabloids, he sold scads of papers by reporting on drunken television stars who misplaced their underwear and politicians with the instincts of rutting bonobos. I heard he paid vast sums of money for the unsavory photographic proof.
    In short, he sold newspapers in an era when other editors couldn’t.
    Under his cutthroat regime, the staff of the Intelligencer lived in fear for their jobs. He had laid off half the journalists during his first week. Some of the remaining reporters claimed concern for their professional ethics. So far, only one reporter had left with his head held high, but there was more rumbling in the lunchroom—­rumbling and posturing, if the truth be told.
    Me, I simply hoped I could continue to receive my meager paycheck. Standing beside our merciless new editor, I felt my palms begin to sweat.
    So I sipped champagne to summon my courage and said, “May I ask why you’re here, Mr. Hardwicke? Is it to supervise me? Is my work not up to snuff?”
    He gave me another unsettling look with eyebrows raised. “Do I give the impression I’m snuffling your work, Nora?”
    â€œI realize this is the first important profile I’ve been asked to write, but it’s going well. After he