I was paid even more when I became a mercenary. I discovered my talent for unearthing High Emotional Content was not limited to underclothes, highlighters, cookies, platinum, songbirds, magazines. I shifted into the male market: bricks, piss, laser printers, ground beef, radiators, thunder, butcher paper, wood smoke. I left it to the minions to quantify and hawk the sentiments. People couldn’t live without any of it, many perished from the lack thereof. King of the Magalogs! they cried, Emperor of Charticles! Master of the Webisode! This was, of course, at a great personal expense on my part. At home, I would pull every book off the shelf and surround myself with the volumes in bed, I would tear the Times into shreds, I would chainsmoke and dig at my eyes, yet I never did find the root mission statement, the ultimate, #1, very best, satisfaction guaranteed. I shoved the children away, grubby and stinking of life, I couldn’t stand anything that close. As for my lovely wife, she liked—she wore—the monuments I made, better than any mirror, always glam-glassy-glossy, with sharper shoes and holiday smiles. She forgave me the loss of a finger or two, the slice off the plump part of her arm. I needed, after all, something pumping blood to temper my chimeras. If she was not up to contributing, broken records would substitute for a chunk of flesh, but only if they were ravishing and rare, only if I listened to them once, with my eyes damp and burning, before hurling them at the concrete.