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bad as she thought, but it was. It really was.
    She threw the rest of the paper on the counter, turned, and walked out with the Sunday section still in her hands. She almost stuffed it into the first garbage pail she saw and did go as far as crumpling it up, but her outrage was so strong, she needed to hold on to it, just to share it with Phil and look at it again. She walked through the spring night, back toward the apartment. Why did Marcus do this to her? Why did he even bother giving her an assignment if he was going to rewrite it? She could swear he did it out of spite. What was the point? She could never use this as a clip. Potential employers would think she was a moron. What was wrong with p. 42 Marcus? What was wrong with her for putting up with Marcus? Or why did she even bother to struggle over her work? Why not just hand in bad stuff and let him revise it as much as he wanted?
    She was to [“at?”] Phil’s door when she realized she’d forgotten both the coffee and the juice, but now she didn’t care. She just wanted to crawl into bed and blot out everything. It was too bad that she had to see Jon later. Usually, she looked forward to their midnight meetings. But now she felt like being alone, crawling into a hole somewhere. She couldn’t go home to her apartment because Laura was there and would be cheery and busy. Of course, when she showed her the paper, Laura would get even more upset then she was, and then she’d have to spend her time calming Laura down. Laura would tell her to quit, to get a new job, one where they appreciated her. But it wasn’t so easy to get a job as a journalist writing features for what the Superman show used to call “a large metropolitan daily.” Without a nice portfolio of well-written articles, her value had actually gone down since she had left school with her masters in journalism.
    Tracie sighed as she walked up the dirty stairway to Phil’s apartment. She wanted to be held like an infant. She walked in the door, then through the living room, trying to ignore the month’s worth of accumulated dirty dishes, the piles of clothes, CD cases, and the assorted sordid detritus of three pathetically dirty man-boys. She walked into Phil’s bedroom.
    p. 43 “Hey, where you been?” he asked. “You took so long that my feet are getting cold. And where’s my coffee?”
    She sighed. Sometimes, Phil was incredibly self-involved. “ ‘Hello, Tracie. How did you sleep? What’s wrong? Mother’s Day a little tough on you?’ ” she began, imitating his voice. “ ‘Oh! Marcus, your bully editor, cut your Mother’s Day feature to shit? I’m so sorry. And you worked so hard on that story.’ ”
    He didn’t show any remorse, but he sat up in bed and opened his arms. “Hey, come over here, baby.”
    Tracie hesitated, but the newspaper crumpled under her arm made her feel so bad that she needed comfort more than pride just at that moment. When Phil gave her that look, everything seemed better. He needed her, and Tracie felt so desired that work seemed instantly unimportant. She crawled in beside him. He gave her a deep, hot kiss. Tracie melted into his arms.
    “Life is always hard for the artist, baby,” he said, holding her tighter and starting to rub her back. “You know, I just finished another story.”
    “Really?” Tracie knew Phil could write only if he was inspired. He didn’t believe in deadlines. “They kill your creativity,” he’d said. “That’s why they call them deadlines.” “What’s the story about?” Tracie asked shyly. Secretly, she’d always hoped he’d write something about her. But so far, he hadn’t.
    “I’ll show it to you sometime,” he said, and pressed both of his hands on either side p. 44 of her spine. It was soothing. He was so much bigger than she was. It felt great to be held against his wide chest, encircled by his arms. This was what she wanted. Not sex, not words, just dumb comfort. She nuzzled against him. Then he