Red Meat Cures Cancer Read Online Free PDF

come, should I bring El Jefe?”
    “Do
not
bring El Jefe!”
    “I’m kidding. God, you’re tense. You’ve got to stop working so hard.”
    The irony of my brother’s words escaped him.
    “Be careful down there, okay?”
    “I’ll call you soon.”
    Closing up my Motorola, I decided that it was the name King that had caused my brother’s problems. It must have created a certain sense of entitlement in his youth as he walked around with this royal appellation. He was allowed to get away with anything he wanted. Kings don’t have to do much in this world to get by, and when they screw up, they are forgiven, if for no other reason than who they are by birth. This was how it worked with King in our family, something I could never understand and had finally stopped trying to figure out.
    On reflection, it occurred to me that I was fortunate in one regard, because you often heard about characters like King, but rarely met them or had one in your own family. Most people’s siblings led the same mundane lives they did, working as lawyers or accountants or salesmen with a house in the suburbs, a wife, a few kids and a dog. They didn’t come close to living life without the proverbial net, but were perpetually fascinated by those who did. People like King, who flitted from one thing to the next, moving entirely outside the conventional and often suffocating expectations of themselves and others. People whom we pitied one moment and admired the next. People whose lives we’d like to step into, if only for a while, to see what we’re missing. Or perhaps to reassure ourselves that we’re not missing anything at all.

4
    Board out of My Mind
    CANANDAIGUA, NEW YORK
    Every year, shortly after the shareholder’s meeting, the Link held a retreat for the entire board of directors. In a waterfront inn on Canandaigua Lake, a sixteen-mile-long Finger Lake southeast of Rochester, we spent two days discussing the upcoming fiscal year. Mostly, it was an opportunity for the ten of us to listen to our leader rant and rave about the hundreds of things that were wrong with Tailburger and the two or three that were right.
    Though a few of us, including me, could voice our honest opinion without eliciting an uncontrollable tirade by our CEO, the Link had assured himself of a predominantly yes-man environment by appointing his triplets Ned, Ted and Fred to the board. Ned, Ted and Fred, who looked, laughed, walked and talked alike, each had a thick thatch of dark black hair on their arms, legs, chest and head, where it was worn in a tightly ringletted perm. They were a husky bunch with slightly protruding paunches and the obnoxious habit of perpetually chewing gum. In all my years with the company, I’d never seen any of the brothers wear anything but golf attire. They came to all meetings in loud slacks, louder shirts and white spiked shoes.
    Better qualified and more appropriately attired individuals filled out the remainder of the board’s slate. Biff Dilworth, a wiry academic type partial to bifocals and three-piece suits, was president of Rochester State University. Chad Hemmingbone, a Brooks Brothers mannequin and fatuous blowhard if truth be told, was president of First Union, the area’s largest bank, and could arrange personal loans for me when the need arose. Annette McNabnay, the city’s first female mayor and our “token chick,” as the Link referred to her, was always the smartest person in the room. Tim Truheart, the owner of three area carpet stores, wasn’t good for much other than the occasional rug sample. The rest of the board was comprised of a rotating assortment of Kodak and Xerox executives who, because of the Link’s short fuse, rarely lasted long enough for me to learn their names. The Link’s patience was tested the most, however, by his own progeny.
    “Ned, will you take off that damned visor? You look ridiculous. Ted, you and Fred, too. Just take the things off.” The Link was displeased.
    “Dad,