I took Dirk out that night for a drink. He was subdued at first, still struggling to deal with the shock. He had seen it coming much more clearly than I had. Indeed, he had been anticipating his firing for so long that he was actually relieved that the paper had offered him another job. “I’m probably going to take it,” he said. “What choice do I have? I’ve got two kids, a big mortgage on a house that’s worth less than what I paid for it, a wife in graduate school who’s convinced I’m going to screw everything up. If I tell Marcus I’m walking, which would make me deliriously happy for five minutes, it will take me six months to find something else. When I do, it will pay less than what Mirror Alert is offering, and it will probably be in some place like Seattle or Austin, where I don’t want to live. What choice do I have, other than to take the bone they’ve thrown me? I’m grateful, if you want to know the truth. They’re being nice to me.”

I hated seeing him like that. He was like a deflated balloon, a wisp of wrinkled rubber. But as he had more to drink, a little of the air began to come back. He began raging about the perfidy of Sellinger, Marcus, the Mirror, the newspaper business. And then, at last, he began plotting revenge. It was a relief, really.

“You know what I’m going to do when I get to Mirror Alert?” he said, pounding the table so hard that his beer lapped over the top of the mug. “I’m going to start my own investigative unit. And we are going to destroy the Mirror. We’re going to break so many stories at the Pentagon that Noel Rosengarten will fucking surrender. He won’t even make it to Minneapolis. He’s going to toddle off to law school the way he should have ten years ago and become a full-time, professional weenie. We’re going to break so many stories at the White House that Susan Geekas will be demanding a transfer. She’ll be asking to cover the school board in New Rochelle, or the Solid Waste Commission in Albany—anything but have to compete with me. We’re going to break so many stories that Bob Marcus will plead with me to come back.

“And you know what I’m going to say? I’m going to say, ‘Hey, Bob. Fuck you.’”