THE SIXTY-SEVENTH PAGE

My practiced hand aided the second deposit on the floor above. After pouring in the gift that keeps on giving, I turned in my week’s work to the managing--if I could use such a word in her regard--editor and stayed on to chat and observe. It would probably take about ten minutes for nature laced with apomorphine hydrochloride to take its unnatural course.

We chatted about movies. We chatted about baseball. We also chatted about—eehgods: fashion. Attempts to steer the conversation toward books was futile. Vendettas are tiring. We chatted about health; mine apparently was particularly fine, she thought. On the contraire, said I, explaining that I was queasy and felt I could vomit at any moment.

By no particular coincidence it was not I who displayed my raisin bran and my breakfast banana, but a particularly loathsome assistant editor who had accidentally chosen the managing editor’s office for his show. He dropped his copyedited manuscript on the floor and vomited all over it with nary a raisin or banana bit on his nicely pressed shirt of French Blue. My unending search for meaningful cliché and appropriate metaphor was once again rewarded. A manuscript was more absorbent than the lad’s chest, where the regurgitation should have landed. Lucky, lucky French Blue shirt. Sick, sick gray-green lad.