“Actually, my body is one long, stiff, hot poker,” he says, leering at her.

Julia lets the skirt that Dan calls imitation cracked leather when she’s not around ride up to within an inch of her panties.

“If I had a dollar for every guy who believed that,” she says, stretching her breast implants against today’s tight wool sweater, “I could buy this dump from my Uncle Roy and turn it officially into the nursing home it’s becoming. When are you guys gonna get some clients in here? It’s like living in a morgue, it’s so quiet.”

“It’s the cold,” I say, knowing she is talking about Dan and some other lawyers on our floor.

Dan is floundering, but then it seems he always is.

“If it was the summer,” Julia challenges me, “you’d be saying it was the heat. Face it, you solo practitioners are dinosaurs. You don’t know how

to market yourselves. You charge too little or too much, and then don’t collect half of what you bill. Half you guys on this floor are dead and don’t even know it.”

Dan grins.

“Thanks for the pep talk, sweetie,” he says, staring admiringly at Julia’s chest.

“You want me to bring you some pie from downstairs?”

“It wouldn’t make it to the elevator.” She smirks, staring back at Dan’s stomach. Though she would sooner die than admit it, Julia has become quite protective of Dan. While he was going through his recent craziness, she worried about him like a mother hen. While Julia likes to pick on Dan, she becomes enraged when other people follow suit. Or putting Dan’s own spin on it, to be such a competitive society, there is nothing we hate worse than competition.

Downstairs in the cafeteria, Dan blows through a plate of spaghetti in five minutes flat.

“Have you ever noticed that the real pleasures in life,” he says, wiping his mouth with a napkin at our table in the non-smoking section, “last no more than a few minutes tops-fucking, eating, shitting, the few seconds right before you know you’re finally going to sleep? All this civilized behavior just fills out the day. We’re just animals, ole buddy. I’d just as soon drop over on all fours right now and quit kidding myself.”