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just terrible about it.
    "Two things you got to remember about Harold," Washington said now. "First, he used to be a big liberal. Got that? Look at the people he hangs out with now, socialites and neo-con economists, leveraged-buyout dudes. You think they're jamming about Marcuse and Malcolm X at dinner? Social justice and third-world revolutions are definitely not what is happening. Not on Park or Madison, anyway. Nobody wants to change the world anymore. They just want to own it. Harold's no dummy. All that stuff he did in the sixties, it was chic and it paid. Revolution was good business."
    "Easy to say now."
    "Doesn't make it any less true. Second, don't assume he wants your books to succeed."
    This had occurred to Russell. But it was also important not to take Washington absolutely at face value. Though he almost always intended to be on Russell's team, he was a man of facets and intrigues so complex they were not always comprehensible even to himself. A good editor, Washington would have been an even better double agent.
    "The world is divided into three kinds of people as far as this shit is concerned," Washington said, on a roll. "There's the good people like you, who are surprised and indignant that, whoa, hey, stop the presses, the government's up to no good. There are the people like me, who aren't surprised at all. Who already fucking knew. Then there's the majority, and they don't want to know about it, Jack." Washington pointed his Walther at Russell, who opened his mouth for a squirt. "By the way—how do you know the brother who was at your party the other night?"
    "What brother?"
    "How many were there, man?"
    "I didn't notice."
    "Jesus." Washington had seen other examples of Russell's obliviousness to his environment, though this seemed extreme. But he was not necessarily sorry in this case. He had been to grade school with the dude, and it had disconcerted him to encounter him there, among the white folks, in Russell's apartment. He did not necessarily like the idea of Russell's knowing about his other life in the old neighborhood, so he let it slide. Some shit don't mix.
    Distasteful as it was, Russell felt he owed it to his author to grovel. That was the only chance he had to light a fire under this book. He had to go to the great Harold Stone, who was believed by some to have invented publishing, who taught the alphabet to Gutenberg, whose blessing called forth glowing reviews, serious essays, Guggenheim fellowships. Who was there when Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and whatever. Doubt and shame? Doubt and pain? Or doubt and hate? Next rhyme was "fate." If anybody could wire it, Harold could.
    Russell padded down the ancient hall carpet to the editor in chief's corner office. For three years he had been right next door to his mentor in a narrow cubicle. But when he had finally been promoted and a bigger office had become available a few months back, Russell had moved a hundred feet away. It was something like leaving home for college. Suddenly he felt awkward when he encountered Harold in the men's room; he would clear his throat, hold his dick and stare at the eye-level tiles. He wasn't sure how this had come about, whether he only imagined a change. But today he realized he hadn't spoken to Harold in almost a week.
    "Nice pearls," he said to Carlton, Harold's blonde and toothy assistant, who sat importantly erect, guarding the portal to the chief, like a girl sporting a broomstick internally, flush against her spinal column. A year out of Radcliffe, she wore the regulation turtleneck and strand of pearls and believed totally in Harold Stone's divinity. She held up one hand in a traffic-cop gesture while cradling the phone in the other. "I'll tell him, I'm sure he will." When hell freezes over, Russell thought. Harold was notorious for not returning calls, and he had stopped writing letters some years before.
    "Is he expecting you," Carlton asked when she'd hung up the phone.
    Russell stuck his head