Even Beverly Hills was hard to take after a week in Italy.  The office looked drab Monday morning when Liz walked in.

     "'Bod' is back!" Red Neck shouted.  He came to walk with her across the Circus to her office, telling her, “I just wanted you to know I was celibate the entire time you were gone.”

     “You were born celibate and you’ll probably die celibate,” Liz snapped.  Her tone was caustic as she added, “And the world will be a better place.”

     “That hurt!” Red Neck declared seriously. 

     Liz chided him, “The truth usually does.”

     "Where've you been?" Vege called out from her office.

     Liz ignored Vege as she hurried on toward her office to get rid of Red Neck and Vege.  She didn’t want to talk to anyone; she was still in a foul mood after her Rome trip.  "Nowhere," she called back.  "Just took some time off to get away from Red Neck.  He’s celibate, you know."

     Vege followed Liz into her office.  "I thought I heard something about you being in New York, or on the east coast.”

     "Yeah,” Liz replied.  “New York a few days.  Strictly business."

     Vege was suspicious.  "Business?"

     Liz tried to get rid of her.  "Sorry, Vege, but I've got a lot of calls to make," she said.

     "Sorrrrrry!” Vege sang.  “I'm outta here!   Didn't mean to snoop.”

     Liz caught herself.  “No!  No!  Hey, Vege, I'm sorry.  Really.  I'm exhausted and I've got a lot on my mind.  We'll talk later.  How about lunch?"

     Vege smiled.  "Sure.  Pick me up at twelve.  We'll go slumming over on Rodeo Drive with the movie tycoons!"

     Liz sank into her swivel and stared at the huge stack of mail and telephone call slips on her desk.  She checked her voice mail and found eighty-four messages waiting to be played, sixteen marked urgent.  When she flipped on her computer she found one hundred and ten Emails.

     Gina called.  "I’m between classes,” she began.  “Meet me at Casa  at five-thirty for an early dinner.  I'm dying to rap."

     Liz agreed and hung up.

     Outside her office, in the Circus area, the TV screens went blank and a Sousa march blared on the speakers.  She glanced out to see her name in green on a yellow background on the TV screen for $12,000, a deal that had just closed for the salesman she placed with Randy in San Francisco, which would net her $6,000.  The usual parade began, with Stan blasting his trumpet as he roared out of his office and headed for her office.  Others lined up outside her office to congratulate her. 

     Joker chuckled, “I don’t believe this!  Bod’s gone a week and still scores.  Maybe she should stay gone a month and see if she can score four times.”

     "Gimme a hug, Bod," Stan said as he came in.  "I'm the only guy in the office you can safely hug!"

     Liz hugged Stan, and then forced a smile.

     "You look worried," Stan commented.  "Problems?"

     "No," Liz replied.  "No problems.  Just tired."

     She was tired.  She had landed in New York Sunday at noon, East Coast time, and had to wait two hours for her L.A. flight.  She arrived in L.A. at eight pm.  By the time she got home, she was exhausted.  Her mind and her body remained nine hours ahead; to her it was five in the morning, not eight at night.

     In the middle of the revelry in Liz’s office her phone rang.  The receptionist told her she had three calls waiting.  "Out!" she ordered.  "Out!  Time to work!  And, hey, 'Gang', thanks.  It feels great to be back."

     There were some mad clients waiting for her.  The first, a squabble over a fee agreement she thought had been resolved before she left, and the next, a possible "fall-off".  A company wanted to fire a placement Liz had made before the thirty day guarantee period expired.  Liz knew she would have to replace the "fall-off" at no cost to the company, and no pay for herself so she tried to convince the president of the company, a woman, to reconsider firing the man.

     "Hell no!" the woman roared.  "I've already kissed his ass and done everything I can for him except ride his damned motorcycle and sleep with him, and I'm not going to do either of those two!  He's out of here!  Get me a replacement!"

     By noon, Liz welcomed the opportunity to escape for a quiet lunch with Vege.  They were fast becoming good friends, and Vege continued to offer her solid advice without the jealousy she had noted from several other seniors who seemed to resent her success.  Liz kept her Rome trip secret, even from Vege.

     After she ate and returned to the office, she found Stan waiting for her to review numbers. 

     "Numbers?" she asked numbly.  "God, Stan!  I haven't even found the bottom of my desk yet.  I've been on the phone all morning."

     "You know it's Monday and I have to report the total numbers to National, which I missed on you last week.  Run through your records and bring me something in thirty minutes."

     Liz didn't want to waste the time and resented the intrusion of reporting numbers, an administrative function, on her business time, but she felt it would be a good time to talk to Stan, let him know that the party with Randy Wilcox was over, and that she would not be handling the last of the two job orders, a new one for Hawaii, and another for Phoenix.

     "Why not?" Stan asked when she told him about Randy.

     "It's over," Liz stated softly.  "I started with six jobs, expanded that to ten, then placed eight people before he changed jobs.  His company wants the new National Sales Manager to select the last two."

     "What's the new Sales Manager's name?"

     "Don't know!  Randy wouldn't tell me.  I don’t want to know."

     "Uh-huh!  Uh-huh!"  Stan continued to pester her, pepper her with questions.  He glared across his desk at her.  "You two had a fight, huh?"

     "No!" Liz snapped angrily.  "I had a fight!  I ripped his heart out and left it on the Trevi Fountain."

     "Trevi Fountain?  The one in the movie?  In Rome?"

     Liz was upset with herself.  She realized she had slipped, that Stan knew where she had been.  Stan did that to people:  he goaded and irritated them in his special way, found their weak spot, then cast his line with bait right into it and hooked the information he wanted.

     Liz nodded.  “The Trevi Fountain in Rome.  Yes, it is the one from the movie.  Now, get off my ass because I'm not calling him back and it will be three more weeks before the new Sales Manager reports in."

     "Mad as hell, huh?" Stan quipped.  "Well, as for other matters, I offered Carl Goodman the opportunity to resign and he did!"  He shook his head.  "I liked Carl, but it was the right thing to do."

     Liz walked around the desk and kissed Stan's cheek.  "Thank you," she said.  "You’re a pro.  I knew you'd do the right thing."

     "All right!  All right!  Enough blubbering and sentimentality!"  He held up his hand.  "Business is business!  Give me some numbers."

     "Here's your precious numbers," Liz said defiantly. "The week before I left, I was on the phone nine hours—“

     "Nine hours?  That's pitiful!  Less than two hours per day!"

     "Nine hours!  Not nine hours and one minute!  Nine hours.  Period.

     "Don't get huffy!  I'm just doing my job!  Now, how many 'Send-outs'?"

     "Three.  That’s pitiful!”
     “And, I had a fall-off'!  The Western Telephone Salesman.  They fired him last week while I was gone.  He was there less than thirty days."

     "Jesus!  A 'Fall-off'?  Can you replace him?"

     "I don't know.  It was a tough job to fill."

     Stan stood and stretched.  "Welcome home!" he said.  "Not exactly like Rome, is it?"

     Liz stood.  "No!  It's not!” she said.  “It's a helluva lot easier!"

                                                                   # 

     “Mistake,” Liz admitted to Gina.  “I really am the Neanderthal woman you described.”

     “I don’t want to rub salt in your mental wounds,” Gina began, as she lifted her wine glass, “but you’ve got to stop surrendering to any guy who says, ‘I love you.’”  She took a sip of wine.  “It is truly amazing to me to discover this attitude pattern in boy-girl relations where gals continue to make the same mistake over-and-over again.  I know you’ve had a bad time, that Doug is chasing every skirt he sees, and that makes you vulnerable, but why do you continue to make the same mistakes?”

     Liz sank back into her booth seat as she glanced around Casa.  “I don’t know,” she admitted.  “It was a mistake and it hurts.  It hurts bad.  Only the money helps ease the pain.  I was just so desperate to make money that I allowed Zingara to take command.”

     "I don't believe this!" Gina snarled.  "This Snake didn't ask you to marry him?"

     "No," Liz said.  “He did not.”  She took a bite of her 'mayo' sandwich as she looked around Antonio's at the tables beginning to fill up for dinner.  A rather large lady was attempting to sing a number from Figaro. 

     "She's rotten!" Gina declared.  "What's she singing?"

     Liz listened a moment.  "Don’t know . . .  just know she’s pretty bad.  Ah!  Countess Almaviva from ‘Dove Sono.’”

     “Ah, yes.  The sad soliloquy, the lost days of her love.  Rather appropriate, huh?  No proposals; just propositions."

     "Oh, Randy had a grand proposition!" she said.  She told Gina about the apartment in New York for six months.  "Then at the end of six months he would have a new reason for a new proposition.  But, no proposal.  I don't know," she said slowly.  “I should have known better!”

     Gina sipped her wine.  "Face it, Betta!  You're gullible!  You've been out of the market place too long to compete with the swift river guys!”

     Tony came over to talk.  "Why my 'Encino Sophia Loren' no in black tights?" he asked.

     "Sit here," Liz ordered as she slid over.  She got the brown paper bag she had brought with her and gave it to him.  "Sorry I didn't have time to wrap it," she added.

     Tony opened the bag and pulled out a thick Neapolitan Cook Book which Liz had bought for him in Naples.

     "Mar-ve-lous!" he boomed.  "You were in Napoli?”

     Liz nodded.  "Last week.  On business."

     "Business!  Only Americans would waste time on business in Napoli.  Napoli is for lovers!"

     Liz shrugged.  "Yeah?  Well, you got to have a lover, Tony.  That's what I thought when I went there."

     After Tony left, Gina asked, "What now?"

     Liz admitted she didn't know, hadn't had time to think about her future.  Doug had told her he was doing extremely well in his new Sales Manager's job but had not even asked her where she had been the past week.  Timmy acted as if she had never left.  "His crisis was getting me to wash his underwear and baseball uniform, which Doug wouldn’t do."

     Gina nodded.  "Why do you think the Randy affair is over?" she asked.

     "Because Rita surprised him and met him at the airport with their daughter!  Randy didn't even introduce me!  He just walked away, left me standing there alone like he didn’t even know me!  He did turn and look back at me, motioned that he'd call me."  The picture of Randy waving at her still hurt.

     "Hey!  It'll pass," Gina said soothingly.  "There'll be another guy on the scene any time."

     "I told you my tale.  You look like you’re beaming with secrets. What have you been up to?"

     Gina rolled her eyes skyward.  "Got a guy," she said.  "Charlie Harris.  And, he ain't Italian, even though he looks Italian with black hair and blue eyes.  He's a short, ugly rascal but his IQ is out of sight and he has a Master's in Computer Science.  I'm his second steady; his first was a computer."

     Liz chuckled.  "What do two eggheads do in bed?” she asked.

     “Well, we talked about Fortran and ‘C+C’ and--“

     “Didn’t you have music, or candle lights or vino?”

     “Not really.  Anyway, we hit the sack on the second date and, well, we’re good together.”

     “Sounds serious.  Is it?"

     "Uh-huh!  He's moving in tomorrow."

     Liz was stunned.  "Moving in?  With you?"  She watched Gina nod.  "Are you in love?"

     "Yes, to everything.  Yes!  Yes!  Yes!  I'm in love!  I'm in heaven!  Oh-h-h!  Squeeze me!  Tell me it's real, it's happening.  He asked me to marry him!  Look at this!"  She held her ring finger up to show Liz a large diamond.

     Liz crossed her arms as she sat back in her seat to listen to her wiry friend tell her about her new boy friend, her lover.  She had to admit there was a strain of jealousy inside her itching to break out, to ask how it was that she, a beautiful woman, could not retain a husband or capture a new one while Gina, not-very-pretty friend with non-existent female curves could be on her way to the altar a third time.  She reached over and got the other brown bag she had brought back from Italy and handed it to Gina.

     Gina opened the bag and held up the silky black negligee just as Tony appeared with the food.

     "Ah-h-h!" Tony exclaimed.  "Now that's what women wear in Napoli.  You going to model it for my customers?"

     Liz pointed to Gina. "She will!  Not me!  She's the one getting married!"

                                                                     #

     Tuesday morning Liz was happy to be back at work, to be immersed in ongoing struggles, to be a part of a team that respected her, even as her own personal business appeared to be turning down, a phenomenon she didn't understand.

     "Every headhunter goes through it," Stan explained when Liz discussed her slump with him.  "Back in the old days, we called it the 'dipsy-doodle' syndrome.  Clients stop calling, SOD calls produced no job orders and every unemployed 'Slug' you never wanted to talk to calls you to chat, while the 'Tens' vanish.  It's your first time on a downhill curve!  Take my advice, do like the professional baseball players do."  He made a swinging motion with his hands.  "It's always in the hands in baseball and always in the noodles in headhunting.  Return to the basics:  SOD as long as you can, don't take any incoming calls from candidates unless they're on job orders and let the receptionist screen your calls and give you employers only.  Brush up on your routines; pitch only real 'Tens'--walking invoices!   Review all your training programs."

     Liz thought Stan's lecture was simplistic, that there had to be more to breaking out of a serious slump than just returning to basics.  For a week, she continued to operate as she had the past month, ignoring Stan's repeated warnings until Stan again called her in to discuss what was wrong.

     "You're floundering!" he announced when she entered his office.  "Sit in the pupil's chair over there, act like a pupil, not a superstar!  And, listen!"  Again, he lectured to her, preached the same sermon, adding that she was ignoring his previous advice because her telephone time had still not gone over ten hours a week, and that her time should be closer to fifteen hours per week.

     "Fifteen?" she roared.

     "Uh-huh!  Fifteen hours per week!  You did more than that when you first started, back when you were hungry and poor!  And, don't give me that 'superstar' crap!  You've got to break out of this slump.  Let me see if there's anything else I can do to help."

     Vege came in to Liz's office to talk.  "Stan upset?" she asked.  “I saw how low your performance numbers were.”

     Liz nodded as she swayed in her swivel.  "The Dragon is breathing fire!  So, how do I break out of this slump?"

     "Stan's right," Vege declared.  "You've got to return to the basics, but you've also got to work smarter.  Basically, I always found that I was doing something wrong and the trick was to find out what it was."

     The TV screens in the Circus area went blank, loud country-and-western music blared, and Vege's name appeared on the screens in red with a $16,000 fee in blue.

     "Wow!  Congratulations!" Liz boomed.

     Vege, who handled computer people, winked.  "Thanks!" she said.  "Worked on my yo-yo for four weeks.  He was obstinate, had a real ego problem.  Anyway, a client sent me two tickets for The Phantom of the Opera at the Schubert Theater in Century City for Friday night.  Wanna go out and eat and see the musical?"

     "I'd like that very much," Liz said.  "I have absolutely nothing going on in my life at this moment.  Absolutely nothing . . . “

     Randy Wilcox called on Wednesday morning.  "Starting my new job in two weeks," he said.

     Liz snarled, "Congratulations!  What do you want?"

     "Are you always that nasty to clients?"

     "You're a former client."

     "Perhaps not!  I'll have some sales jobs coming open in about a month!  Going to need a good headhunter, if you know one.”

     "Forget it!  I’m booked solid for three months.  Not taking on any new clients."

     "Listen, you Italian wench, I missed you.  Liz, I mean it.  I really missed you."

     "You missed the sex, Randy.  That's what you missed."

     "And, you didn't?"

     Liz was stunned.  "What're you getting at, Randy?"

     “I’d really rather tell you this in person but if you won’t meet me, I’ll do it on the phone.”  After a long silence, Randy said, "You remember our first night in Naples?  The little cafe down on the water front?"

     Liz said, "Yes.  Of course."  They had driven down from the Posillipo hills, ridden around Fleet Landing when Liz remembered the romantic little restaurant tucked down into the waterfront.  Violinists had played their favorite songs, they had danced and sung and drank wine.  A lot of wine.  She had been certain Randy was going to propose but he had not, and after two bottles of vino and three hours at the restaurant they had returned to the hotel and to bed.

     "We were pretty drunk," Randy declared.  "You relived your life as a teenage street urchin in Naples that night.  I think you unwound when you found you had not murdered Bony and the Mafia was not after you.”

     A huge crowd had gathered around their table, sung songs with them, listened to Liz tell her tale.

     Randy's voice was somber.  "We went to bed.  The sex was fantastic.  When it was over, you snuggled up against me and said, 'I love you, Doug.'  Do you remember that, Liz?"

     "No!  I don't," she replied angrily.

     "I didn't think you would.  I thought it came out spontaneously.  Anyway, I lay awake a long time after that, Liz.  I asked myself what I was doing in bed with you in Naples, Italy.  I asked myself and couldn't convince myself that you loved me, or that I loved you.  I'm being honest with you, Liz.  The next day in Capri, I didn't know what to do, what to say.  It was different between us.  I still wanted you.”

     Liz listened in silence.  She didn't remember saying Doug's name but she had to admit if Randy said she did, she was certain she had said it.

     "Meet me when I come to 'L.A.'," he urged.  "Please.”

     Liz forced a laugh.  "Where?  Under the sheets at the Beverly Hilton?"  She felt a tear roll out of the corner of her right eye, roll down her cheek and blot into her blouse.

     "We're a lot alike, Liz.  And, yes, I'd love to meet you under the sheets at the Hilton or any hotel you name.  I'll call you next week."

     "No!" she snapped.   "Don't call!  It's over!  I have to get on with my life, hopefully with someone who really loves me!"  She slammed the phone down and started crying.

     Minutes later, the phone rang.  Liz grabbed the phone and growled, "Yeah?"

     Stan said, "My!  My!  We're in our touchy mood today.  I need to see you a moment."

     Liz marched over to Stan's office and went in.

     Stan looked up at her from his swivel.  "Why are your eyes red?  You been crying?"

     Liz sniffled.  "No, Stan!  Superstars never cry!  They are always happy, never sad.  Superstars have no personal life.  Business is their life.”

     "Yeah?  Well, I just got a job order for a salesman for industrial chemicals," he said.  "Good company.  Job is in Orange County.  Thought you might like to work it."

     Liz stood swaying as she studied the craggy face.  "Sure!  I'll take any job order as long as there's no catch."

     "Uh-huh.  Uh-huh.  Well . . . sit down a moment."

     Liz sat in one of the blue pupil’s chairs in front of Stan's desk.

     "This company has a hustler for a Sales Manager, a young Machiavellian Monster on the make!"  He reached into his desk drawer, pulled out two condoms and deposited them in front of Liz.  "You know the drill," he said.

     Liz instantly shoved the condoms back to Stan.  "Sorry," she said.  "In the past I sold my body!  From now on, it's brains only!  I’m not making the same mistake twice."

                                                                      #

     As she went to the elevator for lunch, Liz thought about Randy Wilcox, about the good times they had, the great trip to Italy, the disastrous ending.  She went to the cafeteria on the third floor, picked up a lemon yogurt, and took it with her back to the conference room in the office where she found Debbie and Vege talking.  She hadn't seen much of Debbie since moving into her private office.  

    "How was The Phantom of the Opera?” Debbie asked.

     Liz sat at the head of the table between Vege and Debbie.  "It was great.  The music is haunting but I wish I could remember more of the words to some of the songs."  She asked Debbie what she had been doing lately since she rarely talked to her.

     Debbie smiled.  "I was just telling Vege that I will be leaving in two weeks.  Got a great job with the movies, Paramount Pictures.”

     As Liz started to speak she heard someone yell, "Help! Help!"

     All three of them jumped up and ran out into the Circus area, which was empty at lunch time.  The call for help was coming from Stan's office.

     Liz rushed into Stan's office, found one of the rookie girls hysterically screaming for help; Stan was slumped over in his swivel, his head down, with his telephone headset still on.

     “He just fell over!” the girl shouted.

     "Call nine-one-one!" Liz ordered the girl.  “Help me,” she yelled to Vege and Debbie.   Liz and Vege tried to prop Stan up in his swivel, but he slid down again.

     Vege yelled, "I'll get his feet.  Liz, you get his shoulders.  Debbie, get his rump.  Let’s lift him out of his swivel and lay him on the floor.”

     They lifted Stan out of his swivel and laid him flat on the floor, on his back.

     Liz leaned down and called out, "Stan!  Stan!  Can you hear me? Can you hear me?"   Visions of Doug lying unconscious in the street flashed through her mind.  Stan lay motionless on the floor, his eyes fixed on her in a cold, glassy stare.

     Liz felt Bully move in beside her.  Bully put his fingers on Stan's wrist, held it there for a while and said, "Nothing!"  He reached over and closed each of Stan's eyelids.  He choked as he stood and said, "Stan's gone.  Stan's dead!"  Bully started weeping.

     Liz tried not to cry but she could not hold back the tears.  She went to her office, closed the door, got a towel and bawled as she sank into her swivel.

                                                                    #

     The banquet room SAW reserved was paneled in oak and decorated with pictures of the old West, cowboys and ranch scenes and rugged country scenes with buffaloes.  It was Stan’s favorite restaurant.  The SAW group of forty quietly assembled around the three banquet tables.

     Joker stood at the head of the table.  "Tonight's on the house, paid for by SAW," he began.  "Please order anything you wish to eat or drink.  Before I introduce Mike Clark, I'd like to raise a farewell toast to Stan."

     Everyone stood, raised their glass, and sipped.  Then they sat down.  Liz glanced around the table at Vege, Miss Piggy, Red Neck, Bully.  Tears were flowing.

     Joker wiped his eyes and choked before he got control.  "Stan and I have raised many a full glass here at Charlie's Bar through the years, and we always left with our glasses empty.  As the senior recruiter in the office, I want to say that we'll all miss Stan terribly.  But, having known Stan all these years, through good and bad times, I know that if Stan were here, he would inimitably say, 'Uh-huh!  Uh-huh!  Get it on and get it over with, Joker!  You're boring me to tears!"

     Liz felt tears roll out of the sides of her eyes. Some wept openly; others dabbed their eyes with Kleenex.  Stan was the only manager she had ever had.  The future seemed precarious without him.  She did not know the new General Manager, Mike Clark.

     Joker said, "I have to tell you the joke that Stan loved best.  It was my first joke, the first day he came to work in Beverly Hills, and he asked me many times to tell it again."  He glanced upward.  "So, Stan, I'll tell it again.  We were in a training session which Stan was teaching on how to SOD, and I wasn't paying much attention so he asked me what I was doing.  'Have you learned anything?' he asked me.  I said, 'No, sir, Mr. Greitzer; I was just listening to you, Sir!'"

     The group stirred, some laughed lightly.

     "And, the other was the day Bully went to sleep during one of Stan's famous, dry lectures and Stan asked me to wake him up.  I said, 'No sir, Mr. Greitzer!  He weighs a hundred pounds more than I do.  You put him to sleep so you wake him up!'"

     People began clapping.  Joker was on a roll and the levity eased the pain Liz and the others felt.  People in the room were laughing and applauding between jokes.

     "If you think these are good jokes you should hear the ones I do when I get paid.  Like, the phone rang one day and I answered it and told Stan, 'I think it's for you.'  Stan said, 'You think?  Headhunters get paid to know.  I preached and preached cardinal rule number one to you headhunters:  assume nothing.  Headhunters never assume anything.  Don’t you know that?’  Stan lectured me loud and long on his favorite subject, so I said, ‘Well, Sir, they asked for the 'Old Fart' and since we’re the only two people here, I know it can’t be for me, so I ‘assume’ it’s for you.’”

     The clapping grew louder and the tears vanished.

     “And then, there was the new rookie headhunter at our office who always came to work late.  Every morning, he was late.  So, one day Stan decided to take action.  He met the rookie at the door and roared, 'Don't you know what time we start work in this office?'  The rookie looked him straight in the eyes and said, 'No sir, Mr. Greitzer, because they're always at work when I get here!'"

     Joker bowed to the applause and nodded his appreciation.  "Listen," he said, "Stan wouldn't have this any other way.  Not for headhunters!  You've heard about the cowboy dying with his boots on?  Can you believe that our beloved Commander-in-Chief checked out in full battle dress?  That's right!  The paramedics had to remove his telephone headset from his face."  He raised his glass.  "Good-bye, Stan.  We'll miss you."

     The group stood, toasted Stan a final time and sat down.

     "Now,” Joker continued, “I'd like to introduce Mike Clark, our new Vice President, General Manager.  Mike has been General Manager in our SAW office in Phoenix the past five years. I've known Mike five years and someone told me he didn't seem to be as well dressed as he was five years ago.  I told them I didn't understand why, because he was still wearing the same suit he was wearing the day I met him!"

     The clapping started again.

     Joker smiled as he walked over to Mike Clark's chair and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, meet our new Los Angeles General Manager, Mike Clark.”  He pulled the tall blond man up out of his chair and walked with him to the podium between the tables.  “I'd like to add that SAW offered this job to every SAW branch manager in the United States, some one hundred people.  SAW’s job description for Los Angeles listed a few minor irritants:  earthquakes, mud slides, forest fires, pestilence, smog, airborne bug spraying, freeway grid-lock, car-jackings, drive-by shootings, and the most talented, difficult group of headhunters in the United States to work with.  Since there were no volunteers for the job, Mike was drafted for a one year tour of combat duty with hazardous duty pay for L.A.!"

                                                                    #

     The next day at lunch, Liz whispered to Vege, "Mike Clark is a bastard!"

     Vege frowned.  "He's new, he's different, certainly not like Stan, and it’s understandable that you don’t like him because you’ve only had one boss in your working career.”

     Liz twirled her fork in her salad as she stared out the window at Rodeo Drive.  She leaned back in her chair, glanced around the restaurant to make certain there were no other SAW people around and said, “Are you telling me that Mike Clark is my problem?  Not yours?"

     Vege nodded.  "Precisely.  Mike Clark is a professional manager who has just been promoted to the 'Big City' from Phoenix and he's worried that he might fail."

     Liz said she didn't understand why Mike continued to come down hard on her, demand more than the minimum telephone time, check on her every two hours like a rookie in training, and tell her to outline her plans for the day.  "I just don't understand!" she declared.  "God!  My personal life is in a shambles!  I have nothing to go home to and now I dread coming to work because my boss is on my ass!  It's miserable!  Joker's joke about the boss and a diaper being alike really hit home.    I'm beginning to hate the place!  I don't want to come to work anymore!  I don’t like tyrants.  What do you suggest I do?"

     Vege stood, used both hands to sweep her red hair back, before they went outside.  Once outside, she said, "Better play his game or be prepared to walk.  You're defying him, you know, and managers don't like to be told, 'No.'  Liz, you were a superstar for Stan Greitzer; Mike expects you to be the same for him."

     Liz listened intently to Vege as they walked.  She knew Vege was now a good friend, never broke confidences, and gave her solid advice from experience.  "You made Stan look like a fantastic manager.  He got credit for selecting you; for training you, for being your mentor, and most of all, for bringing in all that extra income you generated as a rookie superstar.  That's what managers get paid to do.  You could do no wrong with Stan because he always saw you as his 'Baby' at the zenith, even when you started to struggle with your current slump.  Your pea was perfume to Stan; Mike Clark doesn't see you that way at all."

     Liz asked how Mike Clark saw her as they entered the office building. 

     Vege punched the elevator button.  "He sees you as a failure reflecting on him after you performed as a superstar for Stan.  Your performance reflects on his management ability, an ability that has yet to prove itself in the big city, an ability that is probably being questioned because he's not motivating you to get the sales volume Stan got from you."

     Liz went to her office, closed the door and sank into her swivel.  She knew Vege was right but she wasn't certain how to handle Mike Clark.  Her training had taught her to analyze everyone she came into contact with, to classify people into one of the four basic types in order to know how to handle the person.  She and Stan were both moderates, not an introvert nor an extrovert.  They analyzed everything to make decisions, which is why Stan had told her she was an outstanding communicator.  Mike Clark was an extrovert sales' type, a corporate gunslinger who often shot from the hip and missed but never apologized or admitted he was wrong because many times he never even knew he had missed his target.  She recognized that her personality would never mesh with his; they would clash over everything, from minute details to major decisions.  The situation seemed hopeless because there were few remedies, other than for one of them to leave, and he had just arrived.  As she stared out at Rodeo Drive she suddenly comprehended why some people she had talked to chose to change jobs in a hurry: they got a new boss who resembled the diaper Joker often referred to as always being on their ass.    

     Randy Wilcox called from New York to say he wanted to see Liz next week when he was in Los Angeles.  Liz immediately turned him down and when he pleaded she hung up on him.

     Gina called.  "How many people can I invite to your shower next week?" she asked.

     Liz thought a moment.  "How many do you want?  Thirty OK?  I thought we'd set up tables around the pool if that's all right.  You can go to forty if you need to."

     "Great!"  Gina declared.  "I'll give you the list tonight at aerobics.  I really do appreciate the shower."

     Liz hung up and wheeled her swivel around to stare out the window at Beverly Hills.  A light rain pelted the windows, giving her the impression that she was isolated from the rest of the world in her little cubby hole.  She was lonely.  She never talked to Doug any more since he started his new job.  At least, he was paying his half the mortgage payments and splitting the food costs.  He was his sassy old self again, authoritative, persuasive, the way she wished he had been after he was fired, and again after the shooting.  She thought about Randy Wilcox, the magnificent specimen of a man who turned out to be just another male louse on the make.  Losing Randy hurt more than she wanted to admit to Gina.  Had he told her the truth when he said that she had called Randy ‘Doug’?  Or, was it just an excuse to use in dumping her?  She had been so stunned when he told her that she had accepted his remark as the truth.  It was such a simple but powerful statement, with deep implications.  She asked herself what it meant.  Randy Wilcox was, after all, an extrovert similar in many ways to Mike Clark.  What she needed at this moment was a shining white knight to ride in on a magnificent white horse to sweep her up and carry her away into the sunset. 

     Liz glanced out at the Pacific Ocean where the sun was still a good three hours away from setting.  “That’s life!” she moaned.  “Can’t even get the sun to set when I want it to.”

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