Said No Boss Ever Quotes

The Marquis De Sade said that the most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit; that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage. When a boss humiliates an employee, or a man humiliates his wife, he is merely being cowardly or taking his revenge on life, they are people who have never dared to look into the depths of their soul, never attempted to know the origin of that desire to unleash the wild beast, or to understand that sex, pain and love are all extreme experiences. Only those who know those frontiers know life; everything else is just passing the time, repeating the same tasks, growing old and dying without ever having discovered what we are doing here.

A man called Ali is in need of money and asks his boss to help him. His Boss sets him a challenge: if he can spend all night at the top of a mountain, he will receive a great reward; if he fails, he will have to work for free. When he left the shop, Ali noticed that an icy wind was blowing. He felt afraid and decided to ask his best friend, Aydi, if he thought he was mad to accept the wager. After considering the matter for a moment Aydi answered, " Don't worry, I'll help you. Tomorrow night, when you're sitting on top of the mountain, look straight ahead. I'll be on top of the mountain opposite, where I'll keep a fire burning all night for you. Look at the fire and think of our friendship, and that will keep you warm. You'll make it through the night, and afterward, I'll ask you for something in return. Ali won the wager, got the money, and went to his friend's house. "you said you wanted some sort of payment in return." Aydi said, "Yes, but it isn't money. Promise that if ever a cold wind blows through my life, you will light the fire of friendship for me

Crooks stood up from his bunk and faced her. "I had enough," he said coldly. "You got no rights comin' in a colored man's room. You got no rights messing around in here at all. Now you jus' get out, an' get out quick. If you don't, I'm gonna ast the boss not to ever let you come in the barn no more." She turned on him in scorn. "Listen, Nigger," she said. "You know what I can do to you if you open your trap?" Crooks stared helplessly at her, and then he sat down on his bunk and drew into himself. She closed on him. "You know what I could do?" Crooks seemed to grow smaller, and he pressed himself against the wall. "Yes, ma'am." "Well, you keep your place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny." Crooks had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego--nothing to arouse either like or dislike. He said, "Yes, ma'am," and his voice was toneless. For a moment she stood over him as though waiting for him to move so that she could whip at him again; but Crooks sat perfectly still, his eyes averted, everything that might be hurt drawn in. She turned at last to the other two.

I remember the first time I saw you,” Allie said. “I thought you smelled me first.” “Right,” said Allie. “The chocolate. But then I saw you as I sat up in the dead forest, thinking I knew you. At the time, I thought I must have seen you through the windshield when our cars crashed…. But that wasn’t it. I think, way back then, I was seeing you as you are now. Isn’t that funny?” “Not as funny as the way I always complained, and the way you always bossed me around!” They embraced and held each other for a long time. “Don’t forget me,” Nick said. “No matter where your life goes, no matter how old you get. And if you ever get the feeling that someone is looking over your shoulder, but there’s nobody there, maybe it’ll be me.” “I’ll write to you,” said Allie, and Nick laughed. “No really. I’ll write the letter then burn it, and if I care just enough it will cross into Everlost.” “And,” added Nick, “it will show up as a dead letter at that the post office Milos made cross into San Antonio!” Allie could have stood there saying good-bye forever, because it was more than Nick she was saying good-bye to. She was leaving behind four years of half-life in a world that was both stunningly beautiful, and hauntingly dark. And she was saying good-bye to Mikey. I’ll be waiting for you, he had said…. Well, if he was, maybe she wasn’t saying good-bye at all. Nick hefted the backpack on his shoulder. “Shouldn’t you be heading off to Memphis?” he said. “You’d better hit the road…. Jack.” Then he chuckled by his own joke, and walked off.

On Rachel's show for November 7, 2012: We're not going to have a supreme court that will overturn Roe versus Wade. There will be no more Antonio Scalias and Samuel Aleatos added to this court. We're not going to repeal health reform. Nobody is going to kill medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get health insurance. We are not going to do that. We are not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid's insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut. We'll not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you're on. We are not going to redefine rape. We are not going to amend the United States constitution to stop gay people from getting married. We are not going to double Guantanamo. We are not eliminating the Department of Energy or the Department of Education or Housing at the federal level. We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want. We are not scaling back on student loans because the country's new plan is that you should borrow money from your parents. We are not vetoing the Dream Act. We are not self-deporting. We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt. We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January. We are not going to have, as a president, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared, gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help and there was no apology, not ever. We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton. We are not bringing Dick Cheney back. We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War. We are not going to do it. We had the chance to do that if we wanted to do that, as a country. and we said no, last night, loudly.

You simply do not understand the human condition,” said the robot. Hah! Do you think you do, you conceited hunk of animated tin?” Yes, I believe so, thanks ot my study of the authors, poets, and critics who devote their lives to the exploration and description of Man. Your Miss Forelle is a noble soul. Ever since I looked upon my first copy of that exquisitely sensitive literary quarterly she edits, I have failed to understand what she sees in you. To be sure,” IZK-99 mused, “the relationship is not unlike that between the nun and the Diesel engine in Regret for Two Doves, but still… At any rate, if Miss Forelle has finally told you to go soak your censored head in expurgated wastes and then put the unprintable thing in an improbable place, I for one heartily approve. Tunny, who was no mamma’s boy — he had worked his way through college as a whale herder and bossed construction gangs on Mars — was so appalled by the robot’s language that he could only whisper, “She did not. She said nothing of the sort.” I did not mean it literally,” IZK-99 explained. “I was only quoting the renunciation scene in Gently Come Twilight. By Stichling, you know — almost as sensitive a writer as Brochet.

Hurry up. I have a letter for you,' said Ianthe. Harrow, it was in your handwriting. She handed me a fat, bulging envelope with your handwriting, and it said 'To be given to Gideon Nav,' and I felt - strange. Time softened as I held it, and I didn't even care about the barely repressed mirthful scorn on the other girl's face. It was your curt, aggravated handwriting, curter and more aggravated than ever, like you'd written it in a hurry. I'd gotten so many letters in that handwriting, calling me names or bossing me around. You'd touched that letter, and I - you know it was killing me twice that you weren't there, right? You must know it was destroying me to be there in your body, trying to keep your thumbs on, and I couldn't even hear your damn voice?

He made a noise that sounded like a strangled laugh, and then said: Ah, I like your style. I’ll give you that. You’re not easy to get the upper hand on, are you? Obviously I’m not going to manage it. It’s funny, because you carry on like you’d let me walk all over you, answering my texts at two in the morning, and then telling me you’re in love with me, blah blah blah. But that’s all your way of saying, just try and catch me, because you won’t. And I can see I won’t. You’re not going to let me have it for a minute. Nine times out of ten you’d have someone fooled with the way you go on. They’d be delighted with themselves, thinking they were really the boss of you. Yeah, yeah, but I’m not an idiot. You’re only letting me act badly because it puts you above me, and that’s where you like to be. Above, above. And I don’t take it personally, by the way, I don’t think you’d let anyone near you. Actually, I respect it. You’re looking out for yourself, and I’m sure you have your reasons. I’m sorry I was so harsh on you with what I said, because you were right, I was just trying to hurt you. And I probably did hurt you, big deal. Anyone can hurt anyone if they go out of their way. But then instead of getting mad with me, you go saying I’m welcome to stay over and you still love me and all this. Because you have to be perfect, don’t you? No, you really have a way about you, I must say. And I’m sorry, alright? I won’t be trying to take a jab at you again. Lesson learned. But from now on you don’t need to act like you’re under my thumb, when we both know I’m nowhere near you. Alright? Another long silence fell. Their faces were invisible in darkness. Eventually, in a high and strained voice, straining perhaps for an evenness or lightness it did not attain, she replied: Alright. If I ever do get a hold of you, you won’t need to tell me, he said. I’ll know. But I’m not going to chase too much. I’ll just stay where I am and see if you come to me. Yes, that’s what hunters do with deer, she said. Before they kill them.

This resentment you feel toward Father Henrique is another example," Holtzman said. "What did the man ever do to you? Nothing. So he botched that exorcism. It was his first one. He was young. Do you know what I did at my first exorcism?" "Ran," Alaric said at the same time as his boss. "Thats exactly right," Holtzman went on. "Its extremely frightening to look into the face of evil for the first time." "Not," Alaric said, "as frightening as looking into the face of a man who has willing taken a vow of chastity.

To willingly be with a man incapable of choosing the woman he said he loved was a form of self-hatred. I’d spent too many years hating myself to ever go back to that.

You just hung up on my boss,” I said. “He was talking in circles. He’ll get over it.” “You know what your problem is? ‘You’ as in Primes, in general?” “I think you’re about to tell me.” Mad Rogan leaned forward with rapt attention. “Your problem is that nobody ever tells you no. You think you can do whatever you want, enter wherever you want . . .” “Seduce whoever we want.” He grinned, a wicked, wolfish smile. Oh no, we are not veering off the highway onto that road. “You play with people’s lives. When cops show up, you wave your hand and make them go away. Because you are Primes and the rest of us are, apparently, nothing.” “Mhm,” he said. “The irony of this is so rich, it’s simply delicious.” “I don’t see what’s so ironic about it.” “I’d tell you, but it would ruin the fun.” “Could you be more smug?” He leaned on his elbow. “Possibly. I see you liked the flowers.” I got a sudden urge to set the carnations on fire. “They are gorgeous. It’s not their fault you brought them.

What about Katerina? Is she Head Girl?" "Boss Cat, more like." Isabella wrinkled her nose. "Where's she from?" "Sweden," said Isabella carelessly. Oh, right. So Cassie's movie-star casting had been spot-on. Not that she could imagine Katerina ever Vanting to Be Alone, though. Who else was Swedish? ABBA? Cassie wrinkled her nose. Not a good comparison. "I can see her in a silver catsuit, though," she muttered under her breath.

Being female was not something that ever held Jessica back. “I was used to getting everything I wanted and working hard for it,” said the twenty-eight-year-old writer at Newsweek.com, “so my feeling was, why do I need feminism?

We need a stable government, fast!” I kept saying. “Elections are great in principle but this is no time for high ideals.” The president was cool, a lot cooler than me. Maybe it was all that military training…he said to me, “This is the only time for high ideals because those ideals are all that we have. We aren’t just fighting for our physical survival, but for the survival of our civilization. We don’t have the luxury of old-world pillars. We don’t have a common heritage, we don’t have a millennia of history. All we have are the dreams and promises that bind us together. All we have…[struggling to remember]…all we have is what we want to be.” You see what he was saying. Our country only exists because people believed in it, and if it wasn’t strong enough to protect us from this crisis, then what future could it ever hope to have? He knew that America wanted a Caesar, but to be one would mean the end of America. They say great times make great men. I don’t buy it. I saw a lot of weakness, a lot of filth. People who should have risen to the challenge and either couldn’t or wouldn’t. Greed, fear, stupidity, and hate. I saw it before the war, I see it today. My boss was a great man. We were damn lucky to have him.

Or as billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson said far more colorfully in an interview: “I don’t know why the tie was ever invented … now everyone looks the same and dresses the same. I often have a pair of scissors in my top pocket to go cutting people’s ties off. I do think that ties most likely are still inflicted on people because the bosses, they had to wear it for 40 years and when they get into positions of responsibility they’re damned if they’re going to not have the next generation suffer.

Why are you making that face?” he asked suddenly. I blinked up at him, caught off guard. I raised my eyebrows, trying to play dumb. “What face?” It didn’t work. With a fork hanging out of his mouth, he narrowed his dark eyes just the slightest bit. “That one.” He gestured toward me with his chin. I shrugged in an ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ expression. “Is there something you want to say?” There were a hundred things I wanted to tell him on a regular basis, but I knew him too well. He didn’t really care if there was something I wanted to say or not. He didn’t care if my opinion was different from his or if I thought he should do something differently. He was just reminding me who the boss was. AKA not me. Asswipe. “Me?” I blinked. “Nope.” He gave me a lazy glare before his eyes lowered to focus on the hand I had hidden on the other side of the kitchen island. “Then quit flipping me off. I’m not changing my mind about the signing,” he said in a deceptively casual voice. I pressed my lips together as I dropped my hand. He was a goddamn witch. I swear on my life, he was a freaking witch. A wizard. An oracle. A person with a third eye. Every single time I had ever flipped him off, he’d been aware of it. I didn’t think I was that obvious about it either.

Gator, go wake that woman of yours. I need some answers. We need her to run the computers for us.” “Tonight, Boss?” Gator complained. “I had other ideas.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “We all did. Hop to it.” “What about Sam?” Tucker asked. “His woman is the one who got us into this.” “I’m wounded.” Sam clutched his abdomen dramatically and staggered with quick, long strides so that he made it to the doorway in three quick steps. Jonas coughed, sounding suspiciously like he’d muttered “bullshit” under his breath. Kyle threw a peanut at him and Jeff surfed across the table in his bare socks to try to catch him before he bolted. “He’s in love, boys, let him go. He’ll probably just get laughed at,” Tucker said. “Do you really think Azami’s brothers are going to allow her to hook up with Sam? She’s fine and he’s . . . well . . . klutzy.” “That hurt,” Sam said, turning back. “Did you get a good look at those boys? I thought Japanese men were supposed to be on the short side, but Daiki was tall and all muscle. His brother moves like a fucking fighter,” Tucker added. “They might just decide to give you a good beating for having the audacity to even think you could date their sister, let alone marry her.” “Fat help you are,” Sam accused. “I could use a little confidence here.” Kyle snorted. “You don’t have a chance, buddy.” “Goin’ to meet your maker,” Gator added solemnly. Jeff crossed himself as he hung five toes off the edge of the table. “Sorry, old son, you don’t have a prayer. You’re about to meet up with a couple of hungry sharks.” “Have you ever actually used a sword before?” Kadan asked, all innocent. Jonas drew his knife and began to sharpen it. “Funny thing about blade men, they always like to go for the throat.” He grinned up at Sam. “Just a little tip. Keep your chin down.” “You’re all a big help,” Sam said and stepped out into the hall. This was the biggest moment of his life. If they turned him down, he was lost.

Did I ever tell you about my last phone call?” Garrett asked. “Yes,” Clark said gently. “I believe you did.” Garrett had had a wife and four-year-old twins in Halifax, but the last call he’d ever made was to his boss. The last words he’d spoken into a telephone were a bouquet of corporate clichés, seared horribly into memory.

You’re joking.” “No, actually I’m not,” my boss said and slapped the folder into my hands. “You leave tomorrow morning and I don’t want to see your hairy ass till this is solved.” I looked wildly around her office for something to lob at her head. It occurred to me that might not be the best of ideas, but desperate times led to stupid measures. She could not do this to me. I’d worked too hard and I wasn’t going back. Ever. “First of all, my ass is not hairy except on a full moon and you’re smoking crack if you think I’m going back to Georgia.” Angela crossed her arms over her ample chest and narrowed her eyes at me. “Am I your boss?” she asked. “Is this a trick question?

Chapter 1 “You’re joking.” “No, actually I’m not,” my boss said and slapped the folder into my hands. “You leave tomorrow morning and I don’t want to see your hairy ass till this is solved.” I looked wildly around her office for something to lob at her head. It occurred to me that might not be the best of ideas, but desperate times led to stupid measures. She could not do this to me. I’d worked too hard and I wasn’t going back. Ever. “First of all, my ass is not hairy except on a full moon and you’re smoking crack if you think I’m going back to Georgia.” Angela crossed her arms over her ample chest and narrowed her eyes at me. “Am I your boss?” she asked. “Is this a trick question?

Figure it out, Luna. I don’t wanna be sixty when you decide.” I pressed my lips together. Don’t do it, Luna. Everything is not fine and dandy. Don’t do it. Don’t— Let it go. Let it— I didn’t. “So I have… two years… before then?” I whispered, grimacing at the joke that I shouldn’t have made so that we could focus on the serious topic of our conversation. So I could hold on to the distance I was supposed to put between us because he was my boss. What I got was silence. Freaking silence. The sigh that came out of him reminded me of what I figured a hot air balloon would sound like if it deflated. “I should’ve fired you the other day.” I sucked in a breath, and my entire upper body turned to him. He was smirking. He thought he was being funny. He was… joking. These mocking, laughing eyes I had never seen before slid over to me, and the second they spotted my expression, they changed. My name came out a grumble. “I was playing.” Sure, he’d been. His mouth went so tight, it was edged in white. “I was messing with you,” he insisted, seriously. He was messing with me. Those long fingers flexed again. “You that mad at me?” he asked. “I’m not mad at you.” “Upset with me?” I didn’t look at him as I said, “No.” I wasn’t. I wasn’t. “I just…” What could I say? “You don’t ever joke around with me. I’m just surprised.” I started to crack my knuckles but stopped. “Okay, maybe I am a little upset with you, but I’m almost over it.” Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him glance at me again, and I could barely hear his voice when he spoke again. “I joke around outside of work,” he said softly. I wasn’t going to overthink it. Did that come out defensively, or was it my imagination? “That’s good.” I was such a sucker. I really was.

So you’re going to be the Big Boss Lady?” I opened my mouth to make some quippy comment, but nothing came. So I just said, “Yeah. I am.” She gave a little nod. “You’ll be good at it. But if you ever tell anyone I said that, I’ll kill you.” I chuckled. “Fair enough.” For a long moment, I watched her watching the house. And then, very quietly, I said, “If you’re ready for me to…I don’t know, set you free or whatever, I can now. At least I think I can.” Elodie turned to me, her feet hovering just off the ground. “Where would I go?” “I don’t know.” “Would you…” She trailed off, and if I hadn’t known Elodie better, I would’ve sworn nervousness crossed her face. Then her lips moved so quickly that I couldn’t make out any of the words. “Whoa, slow down. My lip-reading skills aren’t that great.” She drifted closer. “I said, if you’re staying at Hex Hall, then…I want to stay, too.” I blinked. “For real? You want to stay tethered to me for all eternity? Because if you think for one second I’m letting you in my body again, you’ve got another think coming.” “I don’t want to be in your body anymore,” she said, before screwing her face up. “That sounded gross. Anyway, I just want to stay here. For now.” “Why?” She threw up her hands. “Because you’re my friend, okay? Because helping you and your loser crew these past few weeks has been…I don’t know, fun. And way more fun than I thought I could have dead.” I was weirdly touched.

December 8, 1986 Hello John: Thanks for the good letter. I don’t think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don’t get it right. They call it “9 to 5.” It’s never 9 to 5, there’s no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don’t take lunch. Then there’s OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there’s another sucker to take your place. You know my old saying, “Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.” And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does. As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can’t believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did? Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: “Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?” They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds. Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned: “I put in 35 years…” “It ain’t right…” “I don’t know what to do…” They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn’t they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait? I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I’m here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I’ve found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system. I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: “I’ll never be free!” One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life. So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die. To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself. Your boy, Hank

Your woman's a badass, Timur,"he said. "She can't cook worth shit, but she's a badass." [...] "Don't ever cross her," Jeremiah warned. "She knows more ways to kill a man than I do. Seriously, boss, don't do it." [...]"She's inventive when it comes to killing men."He beckoned Timur closer and waited for him to bend down. He looked left and right to make certain no one would over hear him. "You're so lucky, man. She's a total babe," he whispered. "She's a mankiller, and that's hot as hell.

When my dad died suddenly, my widowed mom couldn’t afford my college tuition, so Morrie and his friend Jake Garber, my dad’s boss, and my aunt and uncle, all pitched in. Morrie was the driving force behind it all, though. I did not come to him for help. He just came to me one day and said, “You can’t afford this,” and that he would make it happen. It was a powerful lesson in community for me: When you are in a real one, never, ever say to someone in need: “Call me if you need help.” If you want to help someone, just do it.

As I trailed dumbly up the next flight it seemed strange that we had never said goodbye. We didn’t know when, if ever, we would see each other again yet neither of us had said a word. I don’t know if Siegfried wanted to say anything but there was a lot try trying to burst from me. I wanted to thank him for being a friend as well as a boss, for teaching me so much, for never letting me down. There were other things, too, but I never said them. Come to think of it, I’ve never even thanked him for that fifty pounds…until now.

During all that time I didn't see Willie. I didn't see him again until he announced in the Democratic primary in 1930. But it wasn't a primary. It was hell among the yearlings and the Charge of the Light Brigade and Saturday night in the back room of Casey's saloon rolled into one, and when the dust cleared away not a picture still hung on the walls. And there wasn't any Democratic party. There was just Willie, with his hair in his eyes and his shirt sticking to his stomach with sweat. And he had a meat ax in his hand and was screaming for blood. In the background of the picture, under a purplish tumbled sky flecked with sinister white like driven foam, flanking Willie, one on each side, were two figures, Sadie Burke and a tallish, stooped, slow-spoken man with a sad, tanned face and what they call the eyes of a dreamer. The man was Hugh Miller, Harvard Law School, Lafayette Escadrille, Croix de Guerre, clean hands, pure heart, and no political past. He was a fellow who had sat still for years, and then somebody (Willie Stark) handed him a baseball bat and he felt his fingers close on the tape. He was a man and was Attorney General. And Sadie Burke was just Sadie Burke. Over the brow of the hill, there were, of course, some other people. There were, for instance, certain gentlemen who had been devoted to Joe Harrison, but who, when they discovered there wasn't going to be any more Joe Harrison politically speaking, had had to hunt up a new friend. The new friend happened to be Willie. He was the only place for them to go. They figured they would sign on with Willie and grow up with the country. Willie signed them on all right, and as a result got quite a few votes not of the wool-hat and cocklebur variety. After a while Willie even signed on Tiny Duffy, who became Highway Commissioner and, later, Lieutenant Governor in Willie's last term. I used to wonder why Willie kept him around. Sometimes I used to ask the Boss, "What do you keep that lunk-head for?" Sometimes he would just laugh and say nothing. Sometimes he would say, "Hell, somebody's got to be Lieutenant Governor, and they all look alike." But once he said: "I keep him because he reminds me of something." "What?" "Something I don't ever want to forget," he said. "What's that?" "That when they come to you sweet talking you better not listen to anything they say. I don't aim to forget that." So that was it. Tiny was the fellow who had come in a big automobile and had talked sweet to Willie back when Willie was a little country lawyer.

What I hadn’t realized was that, above all else, Favs was a prodigy. Speechwriters, even great ones, tend to lead either from the head or heart. I was a head-first writer, connecting logical dots and only later adding emotions. Heart-first people went the other way around. Favs was the only true switch-hitter I ever met. His writing was both lyrical and well organized, arcing between timeless values and everyday concerns with astounding ease and grace. Perhaps because he possessed innate talent, Favs tended to separate people into two categories: those who had it and those who did not. I was lucky enough to be lumped into the haves. From the day I arrived he acted as if, all evidence to the contrary, his team benefited from having me around. “So, is it amazing?” friends would ask. Of course it was amazing. Sometimes Kathy, Valerie’s assistant, would explain that we needed to reschedule a meeting because Valerie had been called into the Oval. She said this casually, as though her boss had been put on hold with the cable company and not summoned by the leader of the free world. Other times I would watch Favs and the POTUS speechwriters spitball lines for a set of remarks. A few days later, I would see those exact same lines on the front page of the New York Times. It was unbelievable. I felt like Cinderella at the ball.

To those inclined to defend Trump, they might consider how it would have looked if President Obama had called the FBI director to a one-on-one dinner during an investigation of senior officials in his administration, then discussed his job security, and then said he expected loyalty. There would undoubtedly be people appearing on Fox News calling for Obama’s impeachment in an instant. This, of course, was not something I could ever conceive of Obama doing, or George W. Bush, for that matter. To my mind, the demand was like Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony—with Trump, in the role of the family boss, asking me if I have what it takes to be a “made man.” I did not, and would never.

How often it is that an idea that seems bright bossed and gleaming in its clarity when examined in a church, or argued over with a friend in a frosty garden, becomes clouded and murk-stained when dragged out into the field of actual endeavor. If war can ever be said to be just, then this war is so; it is action for a moral cause, with the most rigorous of intellectual underpinnings. And yet everywhere I turn, I see injustice done in the waging of it. And every day, as I turn to what should be the happy obligation of opening my mind to my wife, I grope in vain for words with which to convey to her even a part of what I have witnessed, what I have felt. As for what I have done, and the consequences of my actions, these I do not even attempt to convey.

Yep. We’re his Lieutenants,” Day answered, picking up the largest coffee cup Furi had ever seen and taking a huge gulp. “You guys had a trying evening last night, so we thought we’d check in on you.” Syn just nodded. “Hmm. Right.” “Nice bandage.” God peeked around his paper again angling his head at Syn’s hand. “Nothing broken?” Syn looked at his hand. “Furi wrapped it up for me last night. Just a little torn skin, it’s nothing really.” “He tried to be all tough but I had to blow on it to make it feel better.” Furi’s teasing had Syn smiling. “Glad you’re okay, Syn.” Day winked mischievously. Furi looked at Syn. “You just don’t realize how awesome it is to have such great bosses. Came to check up on you, considerate enough to bring you breakfast, I mean just all around awesome guys.” “Just wait for it, Furi,” Syn cut him off. “What?” Furi’s brow creased in confusion. “All the warm compliments you’re giving God and Day ... just wait for it.” Furi looked confused. “I don’t know what you’re–” “What else did you have to blow on to make feel better?” Day said around a snort. “Really hate to have missed that show, spanky.” Day smiled broadly at Furi. Furi groaned and dropped his head as he ran both hands through his hair. “You guys watched my videos.” “Hell yeah.” Day grinned. “For evidence and research purposes only,” God chimed in. “Five times,” Day yelled, punching God in his large bicep. “Okay guys. Shut up," Syn huffed. “I’m just saying, you lucky fuck. You get to date a hot porn puppy and we can’t say anything.” Day stared at Furi, completely ignoring Syn’s fuming.

I know you been worryin, but you ought to quit on it now. Because I want to go, boss.” I tried to speak and couldn’t. He could, though. What he said next was the longest I ever heard him speak. “I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I’m tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we’s comin from or goin to or why. I’m tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I’m tired of all the times I’ve wanted to help and couldn’t. I’m tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it’s the pain. There’s too much. If I could end it, I would. But I can’t.” Stop it, I tried to say. Stop it, let go of my hands, I’m going to drown if you don’t. Drown or explode. “You won’t ’splode,” he said, smiling a little at the idea... but he let go of my hands.

Tate was sprawled across the bed in his robe early the next morning when the sound of the front door opening penetrated his mind. There was an unholy commotion out there and his head was still throbbing, despite a bath, several cups of coffee and a handful of aspirin that had been forced on him the day before by two men he’d thought were his friends. He didn’t want to sober up. He only wanted to forget that Cecily didn’t want him anymore. He dragged himself off the bed and went into the living room, just in time to hear the door close. Cecily and her suitcase were standing with mutual rigidity just inside the front door. She was wearing a dress and boots and a coat and hat, red-faced and muttering words Tate had never heard her use before. He scowled. “How did you get here?” he asked. “Your boss brought me!” she raged. “He and that turncoat Colby Lane and two bodyguards, one of whom was the female counterpart of Ivan the Terrible! They forcibly dressed me and packed me and flew me up here on Mr. Hutton’s Learjet! When I refused to get out of the car, the male bodyguard swept me up and carried me here! I am going to kill people as soon as I get my breath and my wits back, and I am starting with you!” He leaned against the wall, still bleary-eyed and only half awake. She was beautiful with her body gently swollen and her lips pouting and her green eye sin their big-lensed frames glittering at him. She registered after a minute that he wasn’t himself. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked abruptly. He didn’t answer. He put a hand to his head. “You’re drunk!” she exclaimed in shock. “I have been,” he replied in a subdued tone. “For about a week, I think. Pierce and Colby got my landlord to let them in yesterday.” She smiled dimly. “I’d made some threats about what I’d do if he ever let anybody else into my apartment, after he let Audrey in the last time. I guess he believed them, because Colby had to flash his company ID to get in.” He chuckled weakly. “Nothing intimidates the masses like a CIA badge, even if it isn’t current.” “You’ve been drunk?” She moved a little closer into the apartment. “But, Tate, you don’t…you don’t drink,” she said. “I do now. The mother of my child won’t marry me,” he said simply. “I said you could have access…” His black eyes slid over her body like caressing hands. He’d missed her unbearably. Just the sight of her was calming now. “So you did.” Why did the feel guilty, for God’s sake, she wondered. She tried to recapture her former outrage. “I’ve been kidnapped!” “Apparently. Don’t look at me. Until today, I was too stoned to lift my head.” He looked around. “I guess they threw out the beer cans and the pizza boxes,” he murmured. “Pity. I think there was a slice of pizza left.” He sighed. “I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.” “Yesterday!

knew she wanted to know the reaction of the casting director. She was always so anxious after it was over: “So? How did it go? What’d they say?” Most of the time I didn’t even look at her. Occasionally I threw her a bone and say flatly, “I dunno. They said, ‘Thanks, fine, good.’ ” Sometimes I put on the shy act instead. It was my way of selfishly doing what I wanted and showing my parents I was in charge by not talking—exactly what some married couples do. If I don’t talk, then I win. I’ve got the power! What a jerk! Why did I do that? I think it was partly a way of punishing her for taking me away from my friends. Partly it was a control thing. It was my way of being in charge, of being the boss. I can do what I want, it silently conveyed. What could she do to me? I was so awful to her, yet I don’t remember her ever getting frustrated with me. She tirelessly drove me an hour each way—sometimes longer in traffic—and waited hours for me to finish. I was so unappreciative of all she did.

But these things that Rome had to give, are they not good things?” Marcus demanded. “Justice, and order, and good roads; worth having, surely?” “These be all good things,” Esca agreed. “But the price is too high.” “The price? Freedom?” “Yes—and other things than freedom.” “What other things? Tell me, Esca; I want to know. I want to understand.” Esca thought for a while, staring straight before him. “Look at the pattern embossed here on your dagger-sheath,” he said at last. “See, here is a tight curve, and here is another facing the other way to balance it, and here between them is a little round stiff flower; and then it is all repeated here, and here, and here again. It is beautiful, yes, but to me it is as meaningless as an unlit lamp.” Marcus nodded as the other glanced up at him. “Go on.” Esca took up the shield which had been laid aside at Cottia’s coming. “Look now at this shield-boss. See the bulging curves that flow from each other as water flows from water and wind from wind, as the stars turn in the heaven and blown sand drifts into dunes. These are the curves of life; and the man who traced them had in him knowledge of things that your people have lost the key to—if they ever had it.” He looked up at Marcus again very earnestly. “You cannot expect the man who made this shield to live easily under the rule of the man who worked the sheath of this dagger.” “The sheath was made by a British craftsman,” Marcus said stubbornly. “I bought it at Anderida when I first landed.” “By a British craftsman, yes, making a Roman pattern. One who had lived so long under the wings of Rome—he and his fathers before him—that he had forgotten the ways and the spirit of his own people.” He laid the shield down again. “You are the builders of coursed stone walls, the makers of straight roads and ordered justice and disciplined troops. We know that, we know it all too well. We know that your justice is more sure than ours, and when we rise against you, we see our hosts break against the discipline of your troops, as the sea breaks against a rock. And we do not understand, because all these things are of the ordered pattern, and only the free curves of the shield-boss are real to us. We do not understand. And when the time comes that we begin to understand your world, too often we lose the understanding of our own.” For a while they were silent, watching Cub at his beetle-hunting. Then Marcus said, “When I came out from home, a year and a half ago, it all seemed so simple.” His gaze dropped again to the buckler on the bench beside him, seeing the strange, swelling curves of the boss with new eyes. Esca had chosen his symbol well, he thought: between the formal pattern on his dagger-sheath and the formless yet potent beauty of the shield-boss lay all the distance that could lie between two worlds. And yet between individual people, people like Esca, and Marcus, and Cottia, the distance narrowed so that you could reach across it, one to another, so that it ceased to matter.

If anyone had ever asked me to defend my work, here’s what I would have said: The more complex a behavior is, the more rigorous and complicated the science behind it. Math, chemistry, that’s the easy stuff—closed models with discrete answers. To understand behavior—human or elephant—the systems are far more complex, which is why the science behind them must be that much more intricate. But no one ever asked. I’m pretty sure my boss, Grant, thought this was a phase I was going through, and that sooner or later, I’d get back to science, instead of elephant cognition. I had seen elephants die before, but this was the first time since I’d changed my research focus. I wanted every last detail to be noted. I wanted to make sure I didn’t overlook anything as too mundane; any action that I might learn later was critical to the way elephants mourn. To that end, I stayed there, sacrificing sleep. I marked down which elephants came to visit, identifying them by their tusks, their tail hair, the marks on their bodies, and sometimes even the veins on their ears, which had patterns as unique as our own thumbprints. I cataloged how much time they spent touching Mmaabo,

Director, I know you're my boss, at least for the time being," vampire agent Ken White told Tony. "But I don't think you know who you were talking to, just then." Ken was driving away from the airport, Tony in the passenger seat. "Who was I talking to?" Tony turned listlessly to agent White. "Merrill is a legend among my race," Ken said. "The rumors are that he's the most powerful vampire that exists. The other one that Lissa is engaged to? That's Gavin, the Council's elite Assassin. Wlodek is Head of the Council, as you know. You've managed to piss off three of the most powerful vampires ever. And if you throw Lissa into that mix, because I have to tell you, she can do things I've never seen or heard of before, well, I wouldn't be looking for favors from any of my kind. In fact, depending on how Wlodek reacts and what he says in that phone call you're going to get, he may pull all the vamps out of the Department." "He can't do that," Tony huffed. "He can. And if we want to keep on living, we'll do as he says," Ken added. "And since it's Lissa, all she has to do is make a call to the Grand Master and your wolves will be gone, too. You fucked up, boss." "Yeah. I won't argue with you over that." Tony rubbed a hand over his face.

One of the many real-life examples comes from Charlie Jones, a well-respected broadcaster for NBC-TV, who revealed that hearing the story of Who Moved My Cheese? saved his career. His job as a broadcaster is unique, but the principles he learned can be used by anyone. Here’s what happened: Charlie had worked hard and had done a great job of broadcasting Track and Field events at an earlier Olympic Games, so he was surprised and upset when his boss told him he’d been removed from these showcase events for the next Olympics and assigned to Swimming and Diving. Not knowing these sports as well, he was frustrated. He felt unappreciated and he became angry. He said he felt it wasn’t fair! His anger began to affect everything he did. Then, he heard the story of Who Moved My Cheese? After that he said he laughed at himself and changed his attitude. He realized his boss had just “moved his Cheese.” So he adapted. He learned the two new sports, and in the process, found that doing something new made him feel young. It wasn’t long before his boss recognized his new attitude and energy, and he soon got better assignments. He went on to enjoy more success than ever and was later inducted into Pro Football’s Hall of Fame—Broadcasters’ Alley. That’s

Let me ask you three questions,” he said. “And then you’ll see it my way. Question One: What’s the worst thing that you have ever done to someone? It’s okay. You don’t have to confess it out loud. Question Two: What’s the worst criminal act that has ever been committed against you? Question Three: Which of the two was the most damaging for the victim?” The worst criminal act that has ever been committed against me was burglary. How damaging was it? Hardly damaging at all. I felt theoretically violated at the idea of a stranger wandering through my house. But I got the insurance money. I was mugged one time. I was eighteen. The man who mugged me was an alcoholic. He saw me coming out of a supermarket. “Give me your alcohol,” he yelled. He punched me in the face, grabbed my groceries, and ran away. There wasn’t any alcohol in my bag. I was upset for a few weeks, but it passed. And what was the worst thing I had ever done to someone? It was a terrible thing. It was devastating for them. It wasn’t against the law. Clive’s point was that the criminal justice system is supposed to repair harm, but most prisoners—young, black—have been incarcerated for acts far less emotionally damaging than the injuries we noncriminals perpetrate upon one another all the time—bad husbands, bad wives, ruthless bosses, bullies, bankers.

All the novices looked as if they could be blown off their mounts by a stiff wind. He didn’t usually allow for second-guessing, but he was about to make an exception. Deciding to go forward with the cattle drive had been about the stupidest idea he’d ever had. “Ready to go, boss?” Frank asked as he rode up. Zane let his gaze settle on the two kids, then he shook his head. “No, but we’re leaving anyway.” Frank grinned. “Me and the boys are taking bets on who falls off their horse first. You’re gonna have to let us know who it is and when it happens for the pool.” Zane pulled his hat down low. For the first time in years, he wanted to be somewhere other than the ranch. Greenhorns. The whole lot of them. Frank and the boys were right. Someone would be tumbling from a horse, and if Zane was lucky, that would be the least of his troubles. “Have fun,” Frank said with an expression that announced “better you than me.” Zane nodded. “I know you’re not much for praying, but you might want to put in a good word with the Almighty.” “Sure thing, boss. You’re going to need all the help you can get.” Zane nodded. “You’ll be able to reach me on my cell phone. We’ll be staying within range of the towers.” “I’ll be here.” Zane wished he would be, as well. A sharp whistle warned him that his life was about to stampede out of control.

During the silence that followed, I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way. The president of the United States just demanded the FBI director’s loyalty. This was surreal. To those inclined to defend Trump, they might consider how it would have looked if President Obama had called the FBI director to a one-on-one dinner during an investigation of senior officials in his administration, then discussed his job security, and then said he expected loyalty. There would undoubtedly be people appearing on Fox News calling for Obama’s impeachment in an instant. This, of course, was not something I could ever conceive of Obama doing, or George W. Bush, for that matter. To my mind, the demand was like Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony—with Trump, in the role of the family boss, asking me if I have what it takes to be a “made man.” I did not, and would never. I was determined not to give the president any hint of assent to this demand, so I gave silence instead. We looked at each other for what seemed an eternity, but was maybe two seconds or so. I stared again at the soft white pouches under his expressionless blue eyes. I remember thinking in that moment that the president doesn’t understand the FBI’s role in American life or care about what the people there spent forty years building. Not at all.

Don’t wimp out on me now—you promised.” Zoe glared at her. “Now listen, I’m going to give you the three rules of being a dominatrix—follow them faithfully and you’ll be fine.” “Three rules?” Chloe was halfway out the door, wobbling crazily on the high boots and feeling more exposed than she could ever remember being in her entire life. “One,” Zoe said, counting them off on her long, scarlet-tipped fingers. “Don’t lose control of the encounter. You’re the boss and you better damn well let the client know it the minute he walks in the door.” “But how do I—?” Chloe protested. “Two,” Zoe continued relentlessly, cutting her off. “Don’t ever have sex with the client, no matter how tempted you are.” Chloe shuddered. “You don’t have to worry about me breaking that rule. But how—?” “Three.” And now Zoe was actually physically pushing her out the door. “Don’t take off the mask.” “Why not?” Chloe finally managed to get a word in edgewise, just as the door was almost closed in her face. Zoe peered at her through the crack in the door with an impatient frown. “Just don’t. The mask lends distance and gives you authority. If you take it off, you’ll be giving up your psychological advantage—giving him the upper hand. Getting too close. Remember, this is a professional encounter, not a romantic interlude. He’ll be wearing one too, by the way.

I remember a story by a flight instructor I knew well. He told me about the best student he ever had, and a powerful lesson he learned about what it meant to teach her. The student excelled in ground school. She aced the simulations, aced her courses. In the skies, she showed natural skill, improvising even in rapidly changing weather conditions. One day in the air, the instructor saw her doing something naïve. He was having a bad day and he yelled at her. He pushed her hands away from the airplane’s equivalent of a steering wheel. He pointed angrily at an instrument. Dumbfounded, the student tried to correct herself, but in the stress of the moment, she made more errors, said she couldn’t think, and then buried her head in her hands and started to cry. The teacher took control of the aircraft and landed it. For a long time, the student would not get back into the same cockpit. The incident hurt not only the teacher’s professional relationship with the student but the student’s ability to learn. It also crushed the instructor. If he had been able to predict how the student would react to his threatening behavior, he never would have acted that way. Relationships matter when attempting to teach human beings—whether you’re a parent, teacher, boss, or peer. Here we are talking about the highly intellectual venture of flying an aircraft. But its success is fully dependent upon feelings.

You’re right,” Phoebe said. “We both need coffee.” “And a change in subject. Come on. Zane sent me to find you and bring you back for breakfast.” She grinned. “Apparently he’s worried about you.” “He worries about everyone,” Phoebe said, trying not to be pleased by Maya’s words. “It’s his nature.” “That’s true. Zane would love to be in charge of the world. He gets off on bossing people around.” “It’s not that,” Phoebe said. “He takes his responsibilities seriously.” “Defending him again?” Phoebe waved goodbye to Manny and started down the path. “He doesn’t need me to defend him. He’s strong enough to take care of himself.” “Interesting.” Maya walked next to her. “So here’s this big, hunky guy who doesn’t need you to rescue him. No wonder you’re all atwitter around him. You don’t know what to do.” Phoebe wanted to kick a rock. It figured Maya would manage to put it all together in about fifteen seconds. It was her own fault for having a smart friend. Maya was right. If Zane didn’t need Phoebe to take care of him, what on earth would he need her for? And if he didn’t need her, why would he want her? She understood the theory that some men cared about women just because. That the women didn’t have to do anything to earn the affection. It wasn’t anything she’d ever experienced in her own life. “Zane isn’t for me,” she said firmly. Maya laughed. “That sounds really good, but I can’t help wondering who you’re trying to convince.

We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only the least realistic of our desires, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, and not, when we came to live, discover that we had never died. We wanted to dig deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to be overworked and reduced to our last wit. And if our bosses proved mean, why then we’d evoke their whole and genuine meanness afterward over vodka cranberries and small batch bourbons. And if our drinking companions proved to be sublime then we would stagger home at dawn over the Old City cobblestones, into hot showers and clean shirts, and press onward until dusk fell again. For the rest of the world, it seemed to us, had somewhat hastily concluded that it was the chief end of man to thank God it was Friday and pray that Netflix would never forsake them. Still we lived frantically, like hummingbirds; though our HR departments told us that our commitments were valuable and our feedback was appreciated, our raises would be held back another year. Like gnats we pestered Management— who didn’t know how to use the Internet, whose only use for us was to set up Facebook accounts so they could spy on their children, or to sync their iPhones to their Outlooks, or to explain what tweets were and more importantly, why— which even we didn’t know. Retire! we wanted to shout. We ha Get out of the way with your big thumbs and your senior moments and your nostalgia for 1976! We hated them; we wanted them to love us. We wanted to be them; we wanted to never, ever become them. Complexity, complexity, complexity! We said let our affairs be endless and convoluted; let our bank accounts be overdrawn and our benefits be reduced. Take our Social Security contributions and let it go bankrupt. We’d been bankrupt since we’d left home: we’d secure our own society. Retirement was an afterlife we didn’t believe in and that we expected yesterday. Instead of three meals a day, we’d drink coffee for breakfast and scavenge from empty conference rooms for lunch. We had plans for dinner. We’d go out and buy gummy pad thai and throat-scorching chicken vindaloo and bento boxes in chintzy, dark restaurants that were always about to go out of business. Those who were a little flush would cover those who were a little short, and we would promise them coffees in repayment. We still owed someone for a movie ticket last summer; they hadn’t forgotten. Complexity, complexity. In holiday seasons we gave each other spider plants in badly decoupaged pots and scarves we’d just learned how to knit and cuff links purchased with employee discounts. We followed the instructions on food and wine Web sites, but our soufflés sank and our baked bries burned and our basil ice creams froze solid. We called our mothers to get recipes for old favorites, but they never came out the same. We missed our families; we were sad to be rid of them. Why shouldn’t we live with such hurry and waste of life? We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to decrypt our neighbors’ Wi-Fi passwords and to never turn on the air-conditioning. We vowed to fall in love: headboard-clutching, desperate-texting, hearts-in-esophagi love. On the subways and at the park and on our fire escapes and in the break rooms, we turned pages, resolved to get to the ends of whatever we were reading. A couple of minutes were the day’s most valuable commodity. If only we could make more time, more money, more patience; have better sex, better coffee, boots that didn’t leak, umbrellas that didn’t involute at the slightest gust of wind. We were determined to make stupid bets. We were determined to be promoted or else to set the building on fire on our way out. We were determined to be out of our minds.

During his time working for the head of strategy at the bank in the early 1990s, Musk had been asked to take a look at the company’s third-world debt portfolio. This pool of money went by the depressing name of “less-developed country debt,” and Bank of Nova Scotia had billions of dollars of it. Countries throughout South America and elsewhere had defaulted in the years prior, forcing the bank to write down some of its debt value. Musk’s boss wanted him to dig into the bank’s holdings as a learning experiment and try to determine how much the debt was actually worth. While pursuing this project, Musk stumbled upon what seemed like an obvious business opportunity. The United States had tried to help reduce the debt burden of a number of developing countries through so-called Brady bonds, in which the U.S. government basically backstopped the debt of countries like Brazil and Argentina. Musk noticed an arbitrage play. “I calculated the backstop value, and it was something like fifty cents on the dollar, while the actual debt was trading at twenty-five cents,” Musk said. “This was like the biggest opportunity ever, and nobody seemed to realize it.” Musk tried to remain cool and calm as he rang Goldman Sachs, one of the main traders in this market, and probed around about what he had seen. He inquired as to how much Brazilian debt might be available at the 25-cents price. “The guy said, ‘How much do you want?’ and I came up with some ridiculous number like ten billion dollars,” Musk said. When the trader confirmed that was doable, Musk hung up the phone. “I was thinking that they had to be fucking crazy because you could double your money. Everything was backed by Uncle Sam. It was a no-brainer.” Musk had spent the summer earning about fourteen dollars an hour and getting chewed out for using the executive coffee machine, among other status infractions, and figured his moment to shine and make a big bonus had arrived. He sprinted up to his boss’s office and pitched the opportunity of a lifetime. “You can make billions of dollars for free,” he said. His boss told Musk to write up a report, which soon got passed up to the bank’s CEO, who promptly rejected the proposal, saying the bank had been burned on Brazilian and Argentinian debt before and didn’t want to mess with it again. “I tried to tell them that’s not the point,” Musk said. “The point is that it’s fucking backed by Uncle Sam. It doesn’t matter what the South Americans do. You cannot lose unless you think the U.S. Treasury is going to default. But they still didn’t do it, and I was stunned. Later in life, as I competed against the banks, I would think back to this moment, and it gave me confidence. All the bankers did was copy what everyone else did. If everyone else ran off a bloody cliff, they’d run right off a cliff with them. If there was a giant pile of gold sitting in the middle of the room and nobody was picking it up, they wouldn’t pick it up, either.” In

Rylan!" Melanie squeals, high-pitched enough to break glass. "I'm, like, so sorry I haven't talked to you all night. Being a hostess is hard work." She dramatically wipes imaginary sweat off her forehead. "Anyway, I finally have some free time. So why don't we go dance, hmm?" Gripping my waist a little too tightly for my taste, she tries to pull me back to the house. I stand strong., jerking Melanie back when I don't move. "No thanks, Melanie." My free arm tightens around Ivy's waist. "I already am dancing with someone." Melanie's sight flickers to Ivy, and for a moment contempt skews her big grin. But it's gone in an instant as Melanie stretches her fake smile to the point she's showing gums and asks, through gritted teeth, "Hi. What's your name?" Ivy can tell there's something off with the girl in front of her, but she still gives her a polite greeting. "Hello. My name is Ivy. How do you do?" Melanie completely ignores the question and turns back to me. "You never told me you invited someone else, Rylan." Melanie's smile goes harsh. "I'm sorry, but unless I give the okay, no one outside of school is invited." She glares at Ivy. "I'll have to ask you to leave." Ivy tilts her head, befuddled at the sudden hostility. "You want me to go?" Melanie rolls her eyes. "Uh, yeah. I just said that." Ivy stares down at her feet, ashamed and no doubt guilty for the wrong reason. She nods. "Okay." She begins to leave but I grab her wrist and pull her back against me. I glare at Melanie. "What if I don't want her to go?" I growl. "Yeah, Melanie!" To my relief, I see Aidan and Nadia wiggle through the crowd. Neither of them look very happy; Nadia's downright fuming. Despite the whole "my liking Ivy" case, she's still there for me. "Don't go telling people they can't be here," Nadia growls, her eyes flashing dangerously. "Who died and made you think you can boss everyone around?" "Last time I checked, this is my party, and therefore I choose who I invite or not," declares Melanie with an obvious edge in her voice. "That's no excuse! The only reason you want her gone is so you can make Rylan your new boy toy, which he doesn't want!" "Oh, like you know him so well?" "I'm his best friend, bitch!" " Excuse me!?" "ENOUGH!" With one word, I bring the argument to an end and all attention back on me. "Nadia's right," I state, glowering at Melanie. "Nadia's always been right. You know one of the reasons I came, other than to show Ivy a good time? It was to tell you to leave me alone, okay? I. Don't. Like. You. So leave me alone!" It was like I announced I farted. Everyone starts whispering with disbelief. No one has ever turned down the advances of Melanie Sweet—until now. It's turning into a night of first for them. Melanie obviously isn't used to this, as her face reddens like a tomato, her beautifully manicured hands clench into fists, and her usually angelic face morphs into a full-blown snarl. How sweet.

How often do you get to see Mr. Byrne?” The words slipped out before I could stop them. Mary chuckled. “I was just talking about what a gorgeous boy Ian Byrne is, and you are asking after Liam?” I blushed. She smiled. “Not often the last few years. I see him rarely, actually. I see Ian more often.” I bit my lip. “Oh.” “That’s an awful forlorn oh,” she said softly. “What is up with you, little one?” I shrugged. “I am just…intrigued I guess. The few times I’ve sat down in the office…the way he’s with his girls. I like him. I’d like to know him.” Mary seemed to like my confession. “But that’s silly! He’s just my boss.” I shook my head and poured juice for the girls. “Liam needs more people around him like you, Nerissa. They see his way as strange…people are afraid of him! So no one tries.” She kept her eyes on the breakfast before her. “An attempt to know him can’t hurt. If he says stop, you stop. If he opens up a bit, and makes a friend…all the better for the both of you.” I ducked my head. “I can’t. How would I do that? No, it’s silly.” Mary smiled. “You are in charge of the two most important people in his life, and you ask how?” I shook my head. “I won’t use them.” She shook her head back. “I never said that. No, you incorporate them. You blend being with the girls with being with him.” I blushed. “Nice thought, but I will just respect his wishes and leave him be.” Mary rolled her eyes. “Who ever said he wanted to be left be?

You can't stop there. Why must I drag every word out of you? If you go back to grunting, I'll pinch you." Since he wasn't wearing a shirt, she had an ample expanse of skin to choose from. Cade grunted when she picked a small piece of his back just below his armpit, and he punished her with his mouth. They were on the bed and laughing before either of them knew it. "I knew you could laugh if you wanted." Lily wiggled free of Cade's hold and sat up. She wore no more than her chemise and a blanket, and the blanket was slipping from her shoulders. In the firelight Cade could see the shadow between her breasts, She wasn't large, but well-rounded. He liked to think that his child added to that fullness. It gave him a feeling of belonging, something he hadn't known in a very long time. "Indians don't laugh," Cade told her solemnly. She didn't even give him a warning. Diving at him, Lily feathered her fingers beneath his arms and tickled until Cade was rolling with laughter as well as his attempt to hold her off without harming her. "Cry uncle," she demanded, wiggling one hand loose from his grasp to tickle his ribs. "Tio," he laughed, turning her over and trapping her spread-eagled against the robes. "It's a good thing for you that Juanita has taught me some Spanish," Lily informed him with gravity, "or I should have to continue tickling you unmercifully." Since he held her completely helpless, this was a lie of magnificent proportions, and Cade nearly doubled up with laughter at her audacity. He couldn't remember ever feeling this way, not even as a boy. He caught her in his arms and rolled over and began to lavish her with kisses. "Stop that, Cade, before you break something," Lily admonished, struggling for a position a little more dignified than sprawling across his chest. As much as she enjoyed what this would lead to, there were other things here to consider, and she wasn't the kind to give up easily. Cade instantly let her go and stared up at her worriedly. "Am I hurting you?" With a lift of her eyebrows, Lily studied Cade's rather awesome chest, down to the place where his buckskins covered his hips. "I was more concerned about you. I don't wish to wear you out too soon." Cade gave a bark of laughter and grabbed her hair, tugging her down to lie curled against his side. "If I don't nip your boldness at once, you will become impossible. You do understand I don't intend for you to be my boss lady anymore?" "Not that I ever was," Lily said, unperturbed.

For some reason I couldn’t wait until Aunt Tillie proved Brian’s assertion wrong. “I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree,” I said. “Are you going back to the newspaper office?” “Yeah, I have to talk to Bay about a new idea I have for advertorial business pieces,” Brian said. “I have a feeling she’s going to put up a fight when I tell her what I want to do to boost revenue.” “Have you ever considered letting Bay run the editorial division and sticking to the advertising?” I asked. “She seems to know what she’s doing.” “I’m the boss,” Brian said. “It’s my job to lead her to the stories. It will be fine.

Let me get this straight. One four-hex to thirty billion, in one year.” “I’ll do it in six months.” Richard said. “You wish to wager?” Roland grinned. “Usual terms?” “Usual. Double the term, or swap now.” Roland tapped the ebony table. “One condition.” “Name it,” Richard snapped. “I get to pick the bum.” It was raining, which was not exactly uncommon for the southern part of Texatron City, and it was nighttime, which occurred roughly once every day. Neon-clad shops lined one half of the main boulevard, while the ramshackle favela perched on the other. Above those precarious dwellings, jutting out of the hillside like challenging chins, luxurious villas that housed the favela’s bosses boasted panoramic glass infinity pools and helipads. Upon the very peak of the great hill, above even those villas, a single, sprawling building sat, lost to the smog-laden rain. Terisco dwelled there, and Terisco was death, plain and simple. Fortunately, there was very little reason for Jayden to ever cross paths with Terisco or any of his lieutenants. He kept his head down. He did his job. He paid his dues. Jayden had a very good chance of living a hard, skinny, but quiet life. That was unless fate meddled, or luck gave him a sharp kick in the

It took Shannon a solid week to start talking to him again as a friend more than a boss. In desperation, on his own birthday, he sent her a big bunch of flowers with a card that said, ‘I’m an asshole. I’m so sorry. Please smile again’. He happened to be in the break room when they were delivered to her, and he saw her reluctant smile. She crossed the room and hugged him. “You are an asshole,” she muttered. Then she smacked him on the shoulder, hard enough to sting. All of the men in the room laughed as he winced. They

break?" She stared back at him, but speaking was beyond her. She was so taken aback by the concern and care he couldn't hide. This was just one more aspect of his personality that she was seeing, whether he wanted her to see it or not. She sucked in a ragged breath. She had one thought and one thought only. She was falling in love with the Neanderthal. **** During the evening and night, Logan fed her soup and made her drink Gatorade and lots of water. Lauren knew he'd called someone, she suspected it was his mother, because she'd heard him talking on the phone. After that, he timed her medicine and alternated between giving her ibuprofen and acetaminophen. He took care of her, and she left any worries she might have had to him. Since the following day was Friday, she already knew she wasn't going in to work, and so did her immediate boss. It had been more than obvious when Lauren had left with chills and a fever and he had called out, "See you Monday." She knew he didn't want her spreading what she had all over the office. So Lauren alternated between sleeping through the evening and night, and being taken care of by Logan. All she had to do on her own was pick her way to the bathroom, and a couple of times, she hadn't even had to do that. He'd lifted her up when she'd swayed a little too much for his liking, and deposited her in the bathroom and closed the door. He'd been there waiting for her, ready to carry her back after she opened the door. They watched some television together, and at about midnight, he carried her through to the bedroom and held her as she slept. Lauren couldn't ever remember having had so much fun being sick. She reveled in his care; she luxuriated in the undivided attention he was showing her. Nothing anyone had ever done for her had ever felt so . . . compelling. The next morning when she realized that he wasn't going to go to work, she rebelled against that. "I'm okay. I'm going to live. Please go to work." He frowned in obvious agitation. "Your fever might flare up again." "I just took the ibuprofen. I'll take some more meds in a couple of hours, okay?" He watched her as if debating the idea. "I think you still need me." God, yes, she needed him. "I'll be fine." She watched him warily, a thousand emotions bouncing around in her head. "You can come back after work if you want." He leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. "That's a given, baby." **** Lauren went back to work on Monday but was slow to fully get her strength back. Two weeks later, however, she was full steam ahead. She'd laid low at work, put a lot of stuff on the back burner as she recovered from what she guessed was a mild case of the flu. Then one day, feeling much better, she took a look at her upcoming calendar and almost flipped out. She had a full schedule packed into the next ten days or so, starting with an out of town trip. Logan took her out to dinner that evening, and after they'd eaten and she'd delayed as long as she could, she lowered the boom on him. After she told him about the trip, he turned in his seat to stare down at her. He said nothing for a moment, as if not trusting himself to speak. The waiter walked by, and Logan motioned for the check with a jerk of his hand. Every motion of his body indicated his heightened stress level. "Logan, you're overreacting," Lauren chided softly. "Am I?" he asked, staring across the restaurant, out the windows, looking everywhere else but not at her while he drummed his fingers on the table. "Yes. It's no big deal, really, I'll be home before you know it," she tried to soothe. "I don't think you understand," he said flatly as he turned to look at her. Oh, Lauren was pretty sure she did understand and told him so in no uncertain terms. "I

As it turned out, Moss and the Patriots were hotter than the game-time temperature of 84 degrees. They ran the Jets off the field in a 38–14 rout highlighted by Moss’s 51-yard touchdown against triple coverage and 183 receiving yards on nine catches. “He was born to play football,” Brady said of his newest and most lethal weapon. The quarterback had it all now. He was getting serious with his relatively new girlfriend, Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen (his ex-girlfriend, actress Bridget Moynahan, had just given birth to their son, Jack), and now he was being paired on the field with a perfect partner of a different kind. Brady wasn’t seeing the Oakland Randy Moss. He was seeing the Minnesota Moss, the vintage Moss, the 6´4˝ receiver who ran past defenders and jumped over them with ease. Brady had all day to throw to Moss and Welker, who caught the first of the quarterback’s three touchdown passes. He wasn’t sacked while posting a quarterback rating of 146.6, his best in nearly five years. Man, this was a great day for the winning coach all around. On the other sideline, Eric Mangini had made a big mistake by sticking with his quarterback, Chad Pennington, a former teammate of Moss’s at Marshall, when the outcome was no longer in doubt, subjecting his starter to some unnecessary hits as he played on an injured ankle. Pennington was annoyed enough to pull himself from the game with 6:51 left and New England leading by 17. “That was the first time I’ve ever done that,” Pennington said. Mangini played the fool on this Sunday, and Belichick surely got the biggest kick out of that. But the losing coach actually won a game within the game in the first half that the overwhelming majority of people inside Giants Stadium knew absolutely nothing about. It had started in the days before this opener, when Mangini informed his former boss that the Jets would not tolerate in their own stadium an illegal yet common Patriots practice: the videotaping of opposing coaches’ signals from the sideline. The message to Belichick was simple: Don’t do it in our house. It was something of an open secret that New England had been illegally taping opposing coaches during games for some time, and yet the first public mention of improper spying involving Belichick’s Patriots actually assigned them the collective role of victim. Following a 21–0 Miami victory in December 2006, a couple of Dolphins told the Palm Beach Post that the team had “bought” past game tapes that included audio of Brady making calls at the line, and that the information taken from those tapes had helped them shut out Brady and sack him four times. “I’ve never seen him so flustered,” said Miami linebacker Zach Thomas.

If you say no to your boss, or your spouse, or your mother, when it needs to be said, then you transform yourself into someone who can say no when it needs to be said. If you say yes when no needs to be said, however, you transform yourself into someone who can only say yes, even when it is very clearly time to say no. If you ever wonder how perfectly ordinary, decent people could find themselves doing the terrible things the gulag camp guards did, you now have your answer. By the time no seriously needed to be said, there was no one left capable of saying it.

If you say no to your boss, or your spouse, or your mother, when it needs to be said, then you transform yourself into someone who can say no when it needs to be said. If you say yes when no needs to be said, however, you transform yourself into someone who can only say yes, even when it is very clearly time to say no. If you ever wonder how perfectly ordinary, decent people could find themselves doing the terrible things the gulag camp guards did, you now have your answer. By the time no seriously needed to be said, there was no one left capable of saying it. If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character. If you have a weak character, then adversity will mow you down when it appears, as it will, inevitably. You will hide, but there will be no place left to hide. And then you will find yourself doing terrible things.

On Central Park West, a woman searching for just the right superlative for the man who is guiding New York through the greatest disaster ever to hit an American city finally said, “He’s not like a god; he is God.” . . . He has achieved what political observers would have told you two weeks ago is impossible. He is not only respected, but revered. And not only revered,

It has been said that you don’t really know people until you have observed them when they interact with a child, when the car has a flat tire, when the boss is away, and when they think no one will ever know. But people with integrity never have to worry about that. No matter where they are, who they are with, or what kind of situation they find themselves in, they are consistent and live by their principles.

Day 1 I am Slinklebert Petrovius Mordechai Smythe, but everyone calls me Slinky, mainly because nobody can ever figure out how to say my name properly. I live in the jungle with my family and we’re the royal family here. It’s no big deal really. It just means that every now and then, dad puts on a crown and makes people bow to him, just so they know who’s boss. And once a year, we have a special party for all the important Minecraftians in the area so dad can show off how many emeralds we have. It’s very boring if you ask me. Nobody ever does though. I’m just a kitten and nobody thinks that I have anything to say they want to listen to. That’s OK with me. I don’t want to be royal anyway. I’d rather play all day. That’s why I’m glad we live in the jungle. There’s so much cool stuff to do here. I can climb trees, chase sunlight through the leaves, and catch fish in the lake. It’s a busy life being a royal kitten. It’s going to be my birthday soon and dad asked me what I wanted. I told him that I wanted to have a pet creeper. He told me not to be so silly. Everyone knows that creepers don’t exist. They’re a story made up by Minecraftians to scare naughty children. No ocelot has ever seen a creeper, and if nobody has seen one then they can’t be real. It’s a shame they’re not real though. They sound so cool! I mean, tall, green things that blow up when they’re annoyed or frightened or trying to cause trouble? Who wouldn’t want to meet one of those? Since dad said I couldn’t have a pet creeper, I had to think of something else to ask for. I know what he really wanted to give me, a day on the throne leading the jungle. I can’t think of a worse present for my birthday. I’d have to sit around all day while people come to see me and complain about what the other ocelots are doing. I’ve sat with dad in the throne room before and it was hard to stay awake. It was so dull! But I could see how much it meant to dad to have me interested in his work, so I told him that I’d like to spend the day with him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile as much as he did when he heard me say that. I could count all his sharp, pointy teeth. He has a lot of them. Now that I’ve thought a little more about it, I should have asked for a big pile of fish. At least they’d taste good. Instead, I’ve got to spend my birthday hanging around with dad when I could be out in the jungle having fun. Oh well. I suppose it’s just for one day. I can put up with being bored for just one day.

You are so fucking sexy when you're bossing people around," Jack said, nuzzling my neck as he pulled me behind an azalea bush. "Have you ever done it outdoors?" "Didn't last night count?" We'd sneaked up to the roof of Jack's hotel for a little loving beneath the stars. "There were no trees or bushes, no flowers or grass. I want you naked in the hellebore moaning my name." He pulled me into his chest, squeezing me so hard, my breath came out in a huff. "Jack, you know how much I love sexy times with you. But I've got a minister to ordain, a wedding to run, a heist to plan, a necklace to steal, and a bride to kidnap. I can't juggle any more balls.

. . . the [NBC] network bosses called her into a meeting. 'Ricki,' they said, 'you're Black. And you're the only woman. We're going to be sending you around the world, and you don't know what you're going to run into.' Ricki laughed. She knew exactly what she was going to run into. 'Having lived in Saudi Arabia,' she told me, 'and having gone to all these different places, I knew that I was treated really special in other countries, far better than the treatment I got in the United States. And that's what happened working for them: The only time I ever had challenges would be in America. But traveling all over the world? Never a problem. NEVER a problem.

Truth is, lying come natural to all Negroes during slave time, for no man or woman in bondage ever prospered stating their true thoughts to the boss. Much of colored life was an act, and the Negroes that sawed wood and said nothing lived the longest.

All-knowing Mother,” he said, with his head bowed. “I’m sorry human beings are such a blight. I’m sorry we litter your earth and choke the fish in your oceans with plastic grocery sacks. We have been given incomprehensible beauty on this earth, but we don’t see it. We walk around angry and blind and ungrateful. I wish we were better, our dumb human race, but I don’t have much hope that we ever will be. The best I can do today is say: Thank you for this world of miracles. We will try to be more grateful. And less ridiculous.” On the first day, or even during the first week, I would have been looking out of the side of my eyes, like Is this dude for real? But now, as he came to a close, I started to clap. Everybody else started to clap, too, and shout things like, “Go, Boss! Tell it like it is!

So how were these people judged? How will we be judged? We get up every morning thinking that if we're good, we'll make it to heaven, and if we're bad, we'll have trouble. But then we see a six-year-old girl die of cancer. We see raging waters and mud swallow innocent people in South America. And we see our neighbor, who cheats on his wife or steals from his boss, become wealthy. We see our cousin, the liar, win the lottery. What sense does this make?" A few people shake their heads. I want to know, too. "Got me," Natto says. "Got me. But I'll tell you this. I want to know. I want to find out. And I'll tell you two more things. One is, overall, we have seen a lot of times in life that what comes around goes around, haven't we?" A few people nod. "In the case of Venezuela, there's no good explanation. But we see sinners locked up every day, and brave men rewarded. And last night on the news, they showed heroes, people who saved lives in Venezuela. We saw people working together. Rescue workers. Relief workers. And that is God." He stops pacing. "That is God," he says again. He goes back to pacing. He has a strong gait. "These people do good. And if one of their planes crashed on the way back to whereever they came from? What sense would that make? I don't know. I don't claim to have all the answers. And maybe there are cases where I will never ever understand them. This is something a lot of churches don't want to admit, but I really might never have the answers. And sometimes, this might make me very angry." I like this. "But I said there were two more things I'll tell you. One is that we have seen that what comes around goes around. And here's the second thing. We judge within ourselves. Those people in Venezuela, the dying, if they led a good life, they knew it. They died at peace. They knew that they didn't deserve it, that it was just something that happened. But a guy who's been hurting people, who suddenly feels a rumble and the sky caves in, he's lying there, torn apart, and besides the physical pain, he knows in his heart, or he feels in his heart, that he's being punished. He can't lie there and say, "Please God I don't deserve to die". Because he knows he did wrong, and he has to apologize and make amends. And so in that way, judgement comes upon him. And we all know in our hearts, whether we're to be judged in the afterworld or not, that while we're on this earth, we judge ourselves.

Nobody ever got anything from a boss by asking nicely,” she said softly. “Someone has the power to make things better and they keep not doing that, sooner or later all that’s left to do is put two in the back of the greedy bitch’s head. Shit, you’re an Indian, right? You know what happens when you wait for the people holding the whip to grow a heart, or you listen to the nice white people who coordinate their protests with the cops.

We persisted with role playing and, about six weeks later, Adam came to therapy with a smile. He had said no. He said it was for something minor: a colleague had texted him to see if he could go in to the office on the weekend and help box some equipment that was going to be transported later that week. At the time of receiving the text, Adam was just about to go for a run along the beach. He had driven about 45 minutes just to get there. So Adam replied to his colleague saying he couldn't. After sending that text message, Adam said he felt an amazing surge of positive energy. He went on the run. But then the fear kicked in. He started thinking he'd get a text from his boss saying to get to the office and help. Despite checking his messages constantly, nothing ever came. A few days later in a staff meeting, Adam shared that he would like to take on a new client. The response was an immediate yes, with his supervisor saying she would set it up for him. When reflecting on these two experiences, Adam said, 'I know it sounds small and trivial, but these two things have given me such a boost. Why didn't I do this sooner?' By being assertive, saying no and sharing his feelings, Adam had unleased a part of himself he usually tried to suppress. He then said, 'What I'd really like to work on in therapy now is how to start thinking about asking a girl out.' In building assertiveness, he went from never saying no to colleagues to asking to take on a client in a staff meeting and wanting to start dating.

Sometime later, Matthew ushered James firmly into breakfast and to their table, which James noticed was only Christopher and Thomas, and a rather select table after all. Christopher and Thomas, in another surprise for James in a morning full of surprises, seemed pleased to see him. "Oh, have you decided not to detest Matthew any longer?" Christopher asked. "I'm so glad. You were really hurting his feelings. Though we are not supposed to talk about that to you." He gazed dreamily at the bread basket, as if it were a wonderful painting. "I forgot that." Thomas put his head down on the table. "Why are you the way that you are?" Matthew reached over and patted Thomas on the back, then rescued Christopher from setting his own sleeves on fire with a candle. He gave James the candle and a smile. "If you ever see Christopher near an open flame, take him away from it, or take it away from him," Matthew said. "Fight the good fight with me. I must be eternally watchful." "That must be difficult, when surrounded by, um, your adoring public," said James. "Well," said Matthew, and paused, "it's possible," he said, and paused again, "I may have been . . . slightly showing off? 'Look, if you don't want to be friends with me, everybody else does, and you are making a big mistake.' I may have been doing that. Possibly." "Is that over?" Thomas asked. "Thank the Angel. You know large crowds of people make me nervous! You know I can never think of anything to say to them! I am not witty like you or aloof and above it all like James or living in cloud cuckoo land like Christopher. I came to the Academy to get away from being bossed by my sisters, but my sisters make me much less nervous than battering rams flying through the air and parties all the time. Can we please have some peace and quiet occasionally!" James stared at Thomas. "Does everybody think I'm aloof?" "No, mostly people think you're an unholy abomination upon this earth," Matthew said cheerfully. "Remember?" Thomas looked ready to put his head back on the table, but he cheered up when he saw James had not taken offense.

Dad, I’m sorry about the report card and all that, but I didn’t do anything bad to Mrs. Lima. She told Jackson and me to do the walk and the driveway, but then she wouldn’t pay us for the walk, even though we did a good job. So we just put the snow back. That’s all.” “According to Mrs. Lima,” Dad said, “she never told you to do the walk because she doesn’t use it. She goes through her garage. And you wouldn’t take her word for it. That’s what upset her the most, that you acted as if she meant to cheat you.” “But she did, Dad.” “Willie--” Dad hesitated. Then he shook his head and said, “I don’t know who to believe.” “Me. I’m your son, and I don’t lie. Much,” Willie amended carefully to cover any white lies he might have told. “That’s true,” Mom said. “You know that’s true, Harold.” Dad lifted his bony shoulders and let them drop. “All right. It’s possible Mrs. Lima’s getting forgetful and thinks she told you just the driveway. In any case, I want to satisfy her, especially after we kept her up last night with the dog barking. So you just return the money for the walk and say you’re sorry. Say you must have misunderstood her.” “That’s not fair,” Willie said. “Fair or not, it’s foolish to make bad feelings with a neighbor over three dollars.” “But Dad--” Willie couldn’t find the words for it, but he knew there was a flaw in his father’s reasoning. Wasn’t Dad holding out for an admission from his boss that he’d been wrong? “Here.” Dad took three dollars out of his own wallet and handed it to Willie. “Go. Just give her this money and say you didn’t mean to upset her…Put on your shoes and your jacket first.” Willie looked at Mom, who shrugged her shoulders. It wasn’t fair, Willie thought resentfully as he marched down his driveway and up Mrs. Lima’s with Dad’s three dollars pinched between his thumb and index finger. Mrs. Lima answered her door, dressed in a wool suit with a lot of gold chains. “Here’s your three dollars back,” Willie said. And he added, “I’m sorry my dog kept you awake last night.” “You can keep the three dollars,” she said stiffly. “I just wanted to teach you a little respect for your elders, Willie.” He nodded. “Okay.” He turned to leave. “Willie,” she called. “You can do my driveway and walk again next time it snows.” “No, thank you, Mrs. Lima,” he called back politely. Her eyes went wide with surprise. Then she shut her door fast. She might have won, but that didn’t mean he was ever going to let her trick him again, Willie told himself. He went back home and returned Dad’s three dollars to him. “So, you and Mrs. Lima made friends?” “No,” Willie said. “But I did what you told me.

As America suffered from the Depression, Kansas City soared, thanks to the Ten-Year Plan. “In Kansas City,” said Conrad Mann, the president of the chamber of commerce, “we are building the greatest inland city the world has ever seen.” New skyscrapers sprouted from the ground every year, and jazz clubs rollicked into the morning, at a time when, as one agent put it, the rest of the country “couldn’t afford three dollars a night for a musician.” Pendergast liked to think generosity was at the core of his power. When a British parliamentarian named Marjorie Graves visited his Main Street office in 1933, he told her he helped “the poor through our organizations.” It was true that Tom’s Town was built on undervalued workers—immigrants, Black labor, the poor. “The Boss” hosted a fancy dinner for the needy every Christmas and kept quarters in his pockets for the homeless. By the early 1930s, with police brutality against the Black community on the rise, Pendergast seized control of the Kansas City Police Department, taking it back from the state of Missouri, which had assumed leadership in the Civil War era. Pendergast assigned staffing oversight to “Brother John” Lazia, the leader of the Fifth Democratic Ward and a charismatic crime boss, and when dozens more loyal Pendergast supporters were appointed to the force, The Kansas City Call reported that police brutality had declined. But Pendergast’s Ten-Year Plan funds rarely made it to Black communities, and the occasional gifts from his patronage system masked the need for lasting racial reforms.

Deprive a cat of sleep and it would die in two weeks. Deprive a human and he would become psychotic. His work was killing people. How was he supposed to frighten these guys? Run up behind them in a halloween mask and shout boo? He never saw the point of views -- what did it matter if it was an ocean or a brick wall you were looking at? People travelled hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to commit suicide someplace with a beautiful view. Did a view matter when oblivion beckoned? They could put him in a garbage bin after he was gone, for all he cared. That's all the human race was anyway. Garbage with attitude. A cutting word is worse than a bowstring. A cut may heal but a cut of the tongue does not. The Sakawa students were all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. Sakawa was a mix of religious juju and modern internet technology. They were taught, in structured classes, the art of online fraud as well as arcane African rituals -- which included animal sacrifice -- to have a voodoo effect on their victims, ensuring the success of each fraud. of which there was a wide variety. The British Empire spend five hundred years plundering the world. The word is 'thanks'. 'That's what it is, Roy! He won't come out, he has locked the doors! What if he self-harms, Roy! I mean -- what if he kills himself?' 'I will have to take him off my Christmas list.' "Any chance you can recover any of it?' 'You sitting near a window, Gerry?' 'Near a window? Sure, right by a window?' 'Can you see the sky?' 'Uh-huh. Got a clear view.' 'See any pigs flying past?' To dream of death is good for those in fear, for the death have no more fears. '...Cleo took me to the opera once. I spent the whole time praying for a fat lady to come on stage and start singing. Or a heart attack --whichever come sooner.' '..there is something strongly powerful -- almost magnetic -- about internet romances. A connection that is far stronger than a traditional meeting of two people. Maybe because on the internet you can lie all the time, each person gives the other their good side. It's intoxicating. That's one of the things which makes it so dangerous -- and such easy pickings for fraudsters.' He was more than a little pleased that he was about to ruin his boss's morning -- and, with a bit of luck, his entire day. ..a guy who had been born angry and had just got even angrier with each passing year. '...Then at some point in the future, I'll probably die in an overcrowded hospital corridor with some bloody hung-over medical student jumping up and down on my chest because they couldn't find a defibrillator. 'Give me your hand, bro,' the shorter one said. 'That one, the right one, yeah.' On the screen the MasterChef contestant said, 'Now with a sharp knife...' Jules de Copland drove away from Gatwick Airport in.a new car, a small Kia, hired under a different name and card, from a different rental firm, Avis. 'I was talking about her attitude. But I'll tell you this, Roy. The day I can't say a woman -- or a man -- is plug ugly, that's the day I want to be taken out and shot.' It seems to me the world is in a strange place where everyone chooses to be offended all the time. 'But not too much in the way of brains,' GlennBranson chipped in. 'Would have needed the old Specialist Search Unite to find any trace of them.' 'Ever heard of knocking on a door?' 'Dunno that film -- was it on Netflix?' 'One word, four letters. Begins with an S for Sierra, ends with a T for Tango. Or if you'd like the longest version, we've been one word, six letters, begins with F for Foxtrot, ends with D for Delta.' No Cop liked entering a prison. In general there was a deep cultural dislike of all police officers by the inmates. And every officer entering.a prison, for whatever purposes, was always aware that if a riot kicked off while they were there, they could be both an instant hostage and a prime target for violence.

Deprive a cat of sleep and it would die in two weeks. Deprive a human and he would become psychotic. His work was killing people. How was he supposed to frighten these guys? Run up behind them in a halloween mask and shout boo? He never saw the point of views -- what did it matter if it was an ocean or a brick wall you were looking at? People travelled hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to commit suicide someplace with a beautiful view. Did a view matter when oblivion beckoned? They could put him in a garbage bin after he was gone, for all he cared. That's all the human race was anyway. Garbage with attitude. A cutting word is worse than a bowstring. A cut may heal but a cut of the tongue does not. The Sakawa students were all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. Sakawa was a mix of religious juju and modern internet technology. They were taught, in structured classes, the art of online fraud as well as arcane African rituals -- which included animal sacrifice -- to have a voodoo effect on their victims, ensuring the success of each fraud. of which there was a wide variety. The British Empire spend five hundred years plundering the world. The word is 'thanks'. 'That's what it is, Roy! He won't come out, he has locked the doors! What if he self-harms, Roy! I mean -- what if he kills himself?' 'I will have to take him off my Christmas list.' "Any chance you can recover any of it?' 'You sitting near a window, Gerry?' 'Near a window? Sure, right by a window?' 'Can you see the sky?' 'Uh-huh. Got a clear view.' 'See any pigs flying past?' To dream of death is good for those in fear, for the death have no more fears. '...Cleo took me to the opera once. I spent the whole time praying for a fat lady to come on stage and start singing. Or a heart attack --whichever come sooner.' '..there is something strongly powerful -- almost magnetic -- about internet romances. A connection that is far stronger than a traditional meeting of two people. Maybe because on the internet you can lie all the time, each person gives the other their good side. It's intoxicating. That's one of the things which makes it so dangerous -- and such easy pickings for fraudsters.' He was more than a little pleased that he was about to ruin his boss's morning -- and, with a bit of luck, his entire day. ..a guy who had been born angry and had just got even angrier with each passing year. '...Then at some point in the future, I'll probably die in an overcrowded hospital corridor with some bloody hung-over medical student jumping up and down on my chest because they couldn't find a defibrillator. 'Give me your hand, bro,' the shorter one said. 'That one, the right one, yeah.' On the screen the MasterChef contestant said, 'Now with a sharp knife...' Jules de Copland drove away from Gatwick Airport in.a new car, a small Kia, hired under a different name and card, from a different rental firm, Avis. 'I was talking about her attitude. But I'll tell you this, Roy. The day I can't say a woman -- or a man -- is plug ugly, that's the day I want to be taken out and shot.' It seems to me the world is in a strange place where everyone chooses to be offended all the time. 'But not too much in the way of brains,' GlennBranson chipped in. 'Would have needed the old Specialist Search Unite to find any trace of them.' 'Ever heard of knocking on a door?' 'Dunno that film -- was it on Netflix?' 'One word, four letters. Begins with an S for Sierra, ends with a T for Tango. Or if you'd like the longest version, we've been one word, six letters, begins with F for Foxtrot, ends with D for Delta.' No Cop liked entering a prison. In general there was a deep cultural dislike of all police officers by the inmates. And every officer entering.a prison, for whatever purposes, was always aware that if a riot kicked off while they were there, they could be both an instant hostage and a prime target for violence.