The club is pretty fancy, I’ll tell you. It is, however, the hottest ticket in a town that is full of hot tickets. The band, swinging like a broken chandelier, is in full rout, and the head waiter is furiously snapping his fingers at underlings wearing short white coats and black slacks to make them hop and set up a round glass dining table for me and my swanky sidekick, a rich grass widow from the right side of the tracks. I yank a double sawski from my money clip and duke the major domo sufficient to repair the inevitable rents in his pride. Once we sit down at the table, the inevitable bottle of bubbly plops into the silver canister filled with cracked and salted ice. It is looking like a long evening, and I better shore up my nerve so I can endure it.

When Frank, a 25-year veteran employee of the firm, walked into the meeting room, his department head was sitting on the opposite side of the glass table. Frank shifted his chewing gum from one side of his mouth to the other, and as the gum traveled across his tongue, he counted his remaining teeth. “Frank,” his department head slowly began, “we have to let you go.” Frank slumped into the chair across from the department chair. “Look, I’m too old to do anything else.” The department head stared at Frank with the flat-eyed look of a gunfighter and said, “Sure, Frank, sure. Here’s your last check. Go clean out your desk.” Frank reached out and took the white envelope held out by his department head. “Sure,” Frank said, “sure.” The sun was suddenly covered by a white cloud with dark spots in it.