On a rainy Saturday afternoon a couple of months afterI started this book, I slipped into my local Korean-run deli for a smoked turkey sandwich on a toasted salt bagel. My friend Heather called and we chatted on my cell phone whule I waited for my order. I told her I was pleased with the morning's work and was in a cheerful mood because of it.
She knew I was writing a book.
"Do you think it will get published?" she croaked in a voice turned husky by an awful winter cold.
"Doesn't matter," I lied.
"What's it about?" she asked.
"Lots of things," I said. "Carly Fiorina, adultery, Chinese fireworks, Vicodin, hope. It's a story of my life over the past five years.
"Oh," she said. "Kind of like taking out the garbage."
My ego dropped its bat and sprinted to the mound, like a Major League batter who's just had his ribs tattooed by a rival pitcher's fastball. But its younger, mindful twin tackled him around the ankles and sat on his back.
And I laughed loud and long.
"Yeah," I said. "That's it exactly.
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