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that’s it.”
    â€œIt’s destroying my personality,” Paul said calmly.
    â€œPersonality.”
    Paul let his features assume the expression of a Buddha.
    â€œI could name a hundred people who would kill to have your job.”
    Paul shrugged so hugely his neck creaked. “This is all beside the point. There is an emergency in my family.”
    Ham studied Paul’s right eyelid. “What?”
    â€œMy cousin has disappeared.” As soon as he spoke, he knew it was a mistake. His first, but he could not afford many.
    â€œYour cousin,” Ham said slowly.
    That had been the weak part. The disappeared part had been solid. “He has vanished.”
    â€œLife is hard.”
    â€œSo I may skip a column or two.”
    â€œWrite them ahead.”
    â€œI can’t.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause I’m sick of it. I’m sick of eating béarnaise and snails and that incredible style of food where they put a piece of lox next to a pickled brussels sprout and call it a salad.”
    â€œYou’ve never eaten béarnaise and snails.”
    â€œI didn’t mean together.”
    â€œYou’re lazy,” said Ham, squashing out his cigarette.
    Paul rolled his eyes, but he knew he was winning. Ham was already pinching another filterless out of the pack, and leaning back in the chair. A lecture was about to begin, and a lecture was the tax paid on a liberty.
    â€œLazy,” Ham continued. “I make you a celebrity. And what are you? Not even thirty. When I picked you, you couldn’t tell a bagel from a—one of those little inner tubes people who have had hemorrhoid operations sit on.”
    The image made both of them thoughtful.
    Paul was thirty-two, a fact which seemed like something that could be used against Ham in some way. He could not think of a way. He tugged the review from his jacket. He offered it to Ham.
    â€œNew Sicily.” Ham glanced at Paul and looked back at the review. “What is it with you and Italian food. You don’t like Chinese?”
    â€œSure,” Paul said, feeling that it would have been better to say nothing. Ham was going to destroy this review, tear it up, and say that Paul had to have another review in half an hour. Paul would threaten to quit. Ham would tell him to leave. When they met again, they would be calm.
    It was true that Paul had become something of a celebrity. A year before the newspaper had run ads featuring Paul’s smiling face. The campaign flattered Paul, in a mild way, until he began seeing his face on the sides of AC Transit buses everytime he went for a walk. He had become reluctant to be on the same street as a bus.
    The trouble with Ham was that Paul actually liked him. He had all the charm of a very old and very fierce reptile, but Paul admired him. Ham knew what he was doing. He was intelligent, and he believed in doing a job well.
    Ham’s scowl was still in place, but there was the slightest twinkle in his eye.
    â€œYou younger guys. You expect a lot of things from life that isn’t going to happen. You draw cartoons for a few years, and you figure—I’m pooped. I need a break. You have a prize job, a job I would personally bleed for, and you piss and moan like you were covering the Donner party. Where is your desire to work? Where’s your hunger to work, until you can’t see straight, and to keep on going, because you have this need to keep going, this need to make something of yourself? To prove something.”
    Ham smoked, reading the review. “I was sportswriter here for years. I won’t tell you horror stories about living on coffee and Camels for weeks at a time. Sometimes, it was fun. Sometimes working at the city dump is fun. I sat at ringside dozens of times. And got sprinkled with blood. My cuffs stained with it.”
    He tossed the review to Paul’s side of the desk. “It’s a good review. Take it to Luke.”
    It was