He’d read about it in one of those small, neighborhood papers you find for free between the street door and the inner one at the supermarket or in boxes next to boxes on the sidewalk. Good guy, though. Didn’t mock or judge me and we joked about my idiocy together.

I don’t think too many people read those papers, but just in case, I checked in with my district office, which is — since I haven’t hired staff in the city yet, either — a woman or series of women at one of those old-school, theatrical answering services, like Judy Holliday worked at in “Bells are Ringing.” It’s probably the only one left in the city, the once-booming answering industry having long ago been rendered mostly redundant by marvelous mechanisms of superior reliability. Still, for us frauds who need to create the illusion of staff, the service remains invaluable.

No messages.