THE HUNDRED-AND-THIRTY-SECOND PAGE

My reading work for my former (as if I had another more recent one) publisher had come to an end during my siege against them because I did not want to go to the offices. The less time I spent there the less a candidate I would be for the mischief. Even after the siege I felt awkward seeing some of the people who had received some of my ranker gifts.

I had determined to locate My Editor despite my fears of a conversation with him. It would be a comfort, and perhaps a new challenge, if I could at least know where he was. When I rang up the managing editor, she joked about my asking because she thought we were both lost souls and perhaps had run away together.

We were not amused. And this was not an editorial “we.” The dog started from his open-eyed death position when he saw my reaction to her idiotic comment. He bolted, almost protectively, to my side.

No one seemed to know where he had gone, she said. The wife, who now sat at his desk and slept in a bed with the editor-in-chief, had not heard from him since a few days after his return from the Caribbean to joblessness. They thought he had been on an extended road trip, but no one was certain where he had been and if it had even been in this country. I had a pretty good idea where it was; he certainly wasn’t motoring through Provence.