Fresh Lies [antikvár]

Preface iririnrirsinnnnnnnnr^^ Let me tell you: that was the last time I'll ever accept a job offer when I'm half in the bag. I was at my boss's going-away party, held to send her off to her new job in Washington. I was having the sort of evening you have when life is good and someone else is driving, and was standing out on the porch watching the rain and considering how, by some miracle, my life had become precisely what I had wished it to be. I was newly married; I had a house of my own; I had a job held fast with the thick epoxy of a union contract; I wasn't all that bald, yet. I was a Minnesotan, yea, a Minnesotan, one of God's elect. Then my boss strolled up, drew back, and took an axe to every strut that held me in place. Would I like to come to D.C. and write a column? Now? I said yes, instantly. It was not the sort of thing to which you say no. Happiness is fleeting, but the chance to work in a city roundly reviled as a sinkhole of Byzantine influence and a blood-spattered slaughterhouse of random murder— well, you don't say nay to a chance like that. And so off I went. Sold the house for a dollar, bade my wife farewell—she had some time left in school—and set off for Washington. It is easier to leave home than I thought. Take a deep 1