“Yes, sorry, I know. The Marines?” he said.“I’ll be getting around $2,500 a month starting, well, really starting now. But the first check has...’t hit the credit union yet, but it’s supposed to soon,” I said.“No problem, I got yuh covered for now,” he said.“And, me too,” said Liz. “I’m rich, I’m a pharmacist.” I had to laugh.“I would have expected nothing less,” I said. “I mean you were the second smartest student at Harmon.”“Yes, well that is a true thing isn’t it,” she said.“But I’ll do okay. She was the kind of person that I could’ve made a life with if I wanted to. For some reason, it just didn’t click like that. We knew each other as friends before anything else, and it always just stayed that way. She had a guy problem, she came to me. Trouble with girls? I called her. We were even each other’s defacto date if there was a function, a party, or a wedding and neither of us wanted to go alone. We’d spent the night in the same bed countless times, made out a little bit here and. He has been unable to work, and unable to risefrom bed on the worst of days. He was always a large sort of man, notobese, mind you, but healthy and robust. Now, he eats little, talkslittle, and seems to care for nothing. He lies upon his chaise longue,and gazes at the cracks in the ceiling. Sometimes the cracks look likebunnies to him. Other days they look like the fires of hell, and he saysthat they will roast and blacken his bones, and he shivers and appearsgaunt. You can sense from. You're trying to get me to fire you so you can go and collect unemployment on the company."I laugh out loud once again."Yeah, Nick, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. I can really live it up on company dime with two hundred bucks a week from the unemployment office. Do you even try to use that thing between your ears before you talk?" Careful," he says. He's smiling again, but it's more like a baring of teeth. "I will not have my subordinates come in here and insult me in my own office." He.