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what?”
    “Meaning that I learned exactly what the Blob lives for. Which is to be ‘in the moment.’ From the anchor all the way down to the guy who holds the boom mike, there’s a craving to be where it’s happening—to be where it’s at.”
    Now I am a guy who, far from being in the moment, doesn’t even watch the local news. To the extent that I had ever let the thought of journalists enter my mind, I pictured them scurrying around taking notes on those funny little rectangular pads featuring a tightly wound spiral binding at the top. From my perch on the eighty-fifth floor, they had seemed nobody I needed to care about. Let alone worry about becoming a snack in their food chain.
    “What do you feed something that wants to be in the moment?”
    “First, you feed them the feeling that you like them and respect them. Journalists crave approval almost as much as they crave the moment. Second, you help them create the very moment they’re seeking. You hold press conferences. You slip them the names and addresses of people they can blob up. You feed them inside stuff.”
    We were approaching the freeway on-ramp. It’s a place where a driver has to pay attention. A bad merge can kill you. As Jenna focused on executing a good merge, I reflected on what she had said. It made sense. But what the hell was I supposed to do while she fed the Blob its moment? Hide?
    “Jenna, what does all that mean for me?”
    “It means your lawyers might do a few careful interviews on talk shows—the ones where ground rules can be negotiated and followed. But it also means you’re never ever going to talk directly about it to anyone, least of all to the Blob. Instead, you’re going to learn to wave the jaunty wave of the innocent as you get in and out of cars.”
    “I am so thrilled.”
    “More questions?”
    “Yeah. Why do you want to help represent me? Really?”
    “Cause I like you a lot.”
    “You like a lot of people,” I said.
    “How about because you’ve protected me from the assholes in the firm and given me great advice?”
    “I try to do that for all the associates.”
    “Put it this way, Robert. When I came here, I knew I was smart enough to do the work and do it well. I assumed I’d get to be a partner, no sweat. But you made me see that everybody here is smart, one way or another, and that it’s a brutal competition. A hundred associates enter every year. Eight years later, only three or four get to wear the garlands. If I make it, it will be because of you, and I want to repay you. I never thought I’d actually get to do that.”
    I didn’t know what to say in response to such an encomium, so I just asked one more curmudgeonly question. “Any other reasons?”
    “Uh huh.”
    “Such as?”
    “I want to be famous.”
    As Jenna said that, she accelerated suddenly and then swerved deftly to avoid a semi that had changed lanes without warning. Unlike Stewart, Jenna could drive. The maneuver shoved me back in my seat.
    “Well, at least you’re honest about it.”
    “Look, Robert, face it. Big deal civil litigation— the stuff we do—is intellectually interesting. But you can’t dine out on it. I mean, sure, it’s better than being a dentist. But guys at bars aren’t exactly fascinated by what I do. It’s not going to land me an up-and-coming movie producer.”
    “Do you want a movie producer?”
    “I don’t know. But I’m twenty-eight going on twenty-nine, and if I’m not careful I’m going to end up married to some other lawyer, for God’s sake. But if the media stays focused on this and I help get you off, I emerge seriously famous, and I get to do something both more lucrative and more interesting. So it’s a twofer. I do good for you and good for myself at the same time.”
    I had always known Jenna to be ambitious. It was one of the things that attracted me to her. The “tiger, tiger burning bright” thing. But I’d never before seen the tiger glow with quite so many