As she rides by

individual pictured here and named below is a fully accredited agent of the organization also named below. He is authorized by law... blah blah blah.” There was a space to stick in your picture and obviously spaces below for a name and a company’s name and the date of authorization and a signature. Then a quick pass with an iron to seal the plastic, and your novelty is ready for use.
    So I purchased a couple, @ $4.95 each. I could have got them for $4.50 each if I bought three or more, but what the hell. Both King and my Nash were waiting for me in the parking lot out back, so I rejoined them and drove in my usual careful fashion back to the office. We stopped behind an old Buick at the lights at Laurel Canyon and Ventura ; its bumper sticker read, “Pray to keep prayers out of our schools.”
    Once home, King took me for a walk around the block, then I opened up and then I said to myself, big boy, I said, it’s all very well and no doubt all highly amusing, your skirmish with Gall & Garrison, movie moguls to the raincoat brigade, but is it not time to spare a thought for the plight of Tom ‘n’ Jerry in their skirmish, complicated though it may be? It was, it certainly was. So I got out all my notes and scribbles, my conjectures and wild flights of fancy, such as they were, and thoroughly reviewed the story so far, which took a good hour. I was relaxing in my swivel chair, feet up on the desk, thinking it all over, when the twerp returned with her purchases and acquisitions, which she dumped on the desk in front of me, and then she made a big deal out of pretending to wash her hands.
    “Feeling better, dear?” I asked her solicitously.
    She shrugged.
    “Good,” I said. “Say, while I think of it, want to go to the movies with me Wednesday?”
    She looked at me suspiciously. “Why don’t you take Evonne?”
    “Because I want to take you, my pet. Do you good to go out with a mature male for once and besides, I like your company. You’re intelligent, you’re vivacious, you’ve stopped dressing like a Johnny Rotten groupie or a Born-Again Quaker, and also not only will I cover any and all expenses including all you can eat before, during, and after the cinema, but you will be paid a moderate fee.”
    “So what’s the catch?” she said.
    “Know who else said that?” I said. “Old Hollywood story. Starving agent meets the devil in the Brown Derby. Devil says, ‘If you gimmie your soul and your wife’s and your kids’ and their kids’ souls, I’ll give you exclusive management of Streep, Fonda, Madonna, and Michael Jackson.’ Agent thinks it over, and then he says, ‘What’s the catch?’ ”
    “Ha ha,” she said. “So what is it?”
    “Sara,” I said, “I am too busy to pander to your suspicious and convoluted little brain at present, pardon me ever so. Have we got a date, or not?”
    “I’ll think about it,” she said.
    “So go home and think,” I said. “It’ll give you something to do, because I do not need a report, whether haiku, sonnet, or vers libre, from you covering your activities today on my behalf. Sometimes I do. Those are the times when I am billing someone else and thus have to account not only for my expenses and time, but those of my assistants as well. And thus it is also, may I say, that I have to continually rewrite your reports before their submission to a client, being as it is that most of my clients are businessmen and other professionals and they tend to look wildly askance at expense accounts that rhyme. To conclude, may I stress that this is in no way to be considered a rejection of your poetic skills; as you well know I greatly enjoy, nay, treasure, your artistic endeavors. They are by my bedside constantly.”
    “So’re your full-of-shit pills,” she said. “See ya.” She traipsed out, giving King a pat on the way, looking somewhat more cheerful than she had been on the way in, thanks entirely to the efforts of Mrs. Daniel’s number one son, may I say. Was she lucky she had me around to use as a combination Wailing Wall and Kleenex; and so were all the others, too, for all the thanks I got, not that I ever asked for any. There are such people as givers in the world, as there are takers. And takers and takers. And takers-out for demitasses of cappuccino, too, let us not overlook that pygmy-sized type of taker, those Napoleonic-complexed aggressive little moochers.
    Muscle, I thought. I need some muscle. Not to take care of E.L.S.’s hairy