Ach. It’s a ridiculous effort. The truth is, Arthur was right. He doesn’t have any work that means anything to him. And in fact he’s almost late for this meaningless work, the one that brings in the money. That isn’t good. He throws on shoes, brushes his teeth and hair, runs out to his car and hits the program for the First American Title Insurance and Real Estate Company, on East Fifth Street in Santa Ana. Oldest title company in Orange County, still going strong, and when Jim arrives at his desk there and boots up he finds that there’s the usual immense amount of work waiting to be typed in and processed. Transfers, notices, assessments, the barrage of legal screenwork needed to make sales, move land in and out of escrow. Jim is the lowliest sort of clerk, a part-time typist, really. The three-hour shift is exhausting, even though he does the work on automatic pilot, and spends his time thinking about the recent conversation with Arthur. Everyone’s typing away at their screens, absorbed in the worlds of their tasks, oblivious to the office and the people working around them. Jim doesn’t even recognize anyone; there are so many people on the short shifts, and Jim has so few hours, that few of his colleagues ever become familiar. And none of them are here today.

It gets so depressing that he goes in to visit Humphrey, who is sort of his boss, in that Humphrey makes use of the services of Jim’s pool. Humphrey is the rising young star of the real estate division, which Jim finds disgusting. But they’re friends, so what can he say?

“Hi, Hump. How’s it going.”

“Real good, Jim! How about you?”

“Okay. What’s got you so happy?”

“Well, you know how I managed to grab one of the last pieces of Cleveland when the government sold it.”

“Yeah, I know.” This, to Jim, is one of the great disasters of the last twenty years: the federal government’s decision, under immense pressure from the southern California real estate lobby and the OC Board of Supervisors, to break up the Cleveland National Forest, on the border of Orange and Riverside counties, and sell it for private development. A good way to help pay the interest on the gargantuan national debt, and there wasn’t really any forest out there anyway, just dirt hills surrounded by a bunch of communities that desperately needed the land, right? Right. And so, with the encouragement of a real estate developer become Secretary of the Interior, Congress passed a law, unnoticed in a larger package, and the last empty land in OC was divided into five hundred lots and sold at public auction. For a whole lot of money. A good move, politically. Popular all over the state.