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drafting section. Figured you wouldn't mind."
        "I'm tangentially interested. Like to keep a hand in." Bingo-another bottle of beer was gone in no time. His newfound thirst was definitely intriguing.
        "Tower and Barrington are designing shopping malls now. The wave of the future. You know they're calling it 'Southern Californiaization'? Fuckheads. May they be crushed in the elevator shafts in the malls those two'll design for the video drones."
        Barry Tower and Stanley Barrington had amicably parted company with Kroeger Concepts just over a year back. Lucas scanned backward for a second. "How's Sean?"
        "He's not here, either. He's off discovering Europe on a budget, and to hell with the terrorists, he says. Probably becoming sexually notorious throughout Scandinavia while you and I sit warming this booth and getting smashed."
        "That's good. Sean Markesson was the worst workaholic I've ever seen. What stopped him?"
        "Me. He was embarrassing us all, making us look bad." Burt often exercised his prerogative as a self-made success to ignore all the rules of bossdom. Now he and Lucas shared the laugh. It was partly the beer, partly the release of pressure. Lucas was reassuming his place in the order of things. So far, the fit was smooth.
        "When Sean first moved to L.A., he was the most self-effacing man you'd ever meet," said Lucas. "A really nice guy. Then he hit Hollywood and bam! He became a slavering monster. Mister Tinseltown. Whoo."
        Burt continued laughing. "Yeah, he got wound pretty tight. Much longer, and we might've had to book him a bed next to yours in the-" The happiness on his face curdled. He actually winced. "Ah-sorry?"
        "Stop being so goddamn careful. Funny-farm jokes are okay by me. My sanity is not an egg in a paint mixer. I'm not going to fracture and rape the barmaid before your disbelieving eyeballs. Trust me."
        Burt cast a glance toward the bar. "He's not your type, anyhow." He let go a beery sigh. "Just let me acclimate. You can scare up a lot of misconceptions about mental health, even in a short time."
        "Stop apologizing. You're a friend, you don't need to apologize to me. Now get up off your knees and tell me what's become of our ad pool."
        The ad pool was the profit nucleus of Kroeger Concepts, the conceptual salad bowl where budgets and brainstorms were combined to yield profits and please the bankbook honchos of Hollywood. When the department was first formed, Burt and Lucas were two-fifths of the combine.
        "Charisse and Evelyn are as you remember them. Only better. Evelyn had herself a showdown with a muckety-muck at Universal over violent sexist advertising."
        "For or against?"
        "Against. But it wasn't what you think-not that censorship rap, not the bible belt's definition of pornography. The VP she had it out with was Derek Windhover."
        "Oh, jesus…" Lucas recalled an earlier run-in with the estimable Mr. Windhover, an executive infamous for forcing oral sex on demand from actresses who came in to read for bit parts. Mr. Windhover was history, Universal was blameless, but the stench of memory lingered. "What a guy. Winner of Mister Congeniality, three years running."
        "Evelyn shouted him down. Oh, boy, it was embarrassing. We lost the account. We got it back after Windhover left. Guess who marched into Universal and sold it?"
        "Here's to Evelyn. The sprite with the sword." They clinked mostly empty glasses. Evelyn stood five five in extreme heels. She had always been painfully polite to Lucas and everyone in the office, as though straining not to offend. She was the facet of the ad pool that never understood Burt's grotesque jokes. But it seemed she had found a cause and erupted from her chrysalis. Good old Evelyn, at the advanced age of thirty-three, had finally loosened up.
        "Charisse concocted the campaigns for The Nam and The Interloper