Troy, evidently assuming that Christine was in trouble, gave a smirk and sauntered away. Christine trudged down the corridor to Harry’s office, walking right past him and collapsing with a whoomf! onto Harry’s leather couch.

“Did Lexus not seed fans to light Mike Hondo,” Harry heard Christine say.

Harry didn’t know what this meant, and didn’t feel particularly like asking for clarification. Whatever nonsense was on Christine’s mind, Harry had more pressing concerns.

“How was Nebraska?” he asked, trying to steer her onto the desired path.

“Did you hear what I said?” Christine asked tersely. “Dyslexic Nazis vandalized my condo.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Harry. “I thought you said….” He trailed off as he realized that he had most likely misheard her again.

“What?” Christine asked.

“Sorry?”

“You thought I said what?”

“Oh, nothing,” Harry said. “I just misheard you the first time. Anyway, I’m sorry to hear about… that.” He hoped he was supposed to be sorry to hear whatever he was supposed to have heard. It seemed like that was what she was angling for. “So, when did you get back?”

“Yesterday. I walk down the hall to my condo, exhausted from this idiocy in the desert with that creep Jonas Bitters, and somebody has smashed –”

“Bitters! Wow, I forgot all about that. I guess the Bridegroom didn’t arrive as expected. Sorry you had to fly out to Utah to –”

“Nevada.”

“Yeah, Nevada, to do that story…”

“I’m not doing the story, Harry.”

“No problem,” said Harry, who was a bit relieved not to have to tell Christine that they had no room in the upcoming issue for the Bitters piece. “I’ve got something better for you anyway. Have you heard of this wacko in Berkeley, Galileo Mercury?”

“Gosh, a wacko in Berkeley,” Christine replied. “How exciting. Tell me more.”

“So… you’re not interested.”

“Harry, I’m not doing this anymore.”

“Doing what?”

“The Apocalypse circuit. I can’t take it any longer.”

“Really?” Harry said. “I thought you enjoyed doing these stories.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Didn’t you say something at the Christmas party about how much you enjoyed talking to all these eccentric, charismatic figures?”

“Yeah, that sounds like me,” said Christine dryly. “Except instead of ‘eccentric, charismatic figures,’ I said ‘narcissistic sociopaths.’ And then I did this.” She pointed her index finger at her temple, firing an imaginary pistol. “I can see how you would misinterpret that.”

Now that Harry thought about it, he did remember Christine doing that. This sort of misunderstanding was one of the reasons Harry tried not to get involved in the day-to-day management of people. He had the prevalent weakness among dominant human males of assuming that everything was just peachy with their subordinates until one of them did something really drastic to get their leader’s attention, like keeling over dead. If he had realized how dissatisfied Christine was with these assignments, he’d have found someone else to cover them. But this wasn’t the best time to be hunting for a replacement.