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“Say,” I gasped, “this isn’t half bad”

I heard a whirring sound

Maggie Botwin’s camera was focused to catch my moment of incipient inebriation

“You carry your camera everywhere?”

“Yep,” she said “No day has passed in forty years that I have not trapped the ether nine hours of damn fools on parade and première it at Grauman’s Chinese Curious? Come see”

Fritz filled lass

“Ready for my closeup” I drank

The camera whirred

32

Manny Leiber was sitting on the edge of his desk, guillotining a big cigar with one of those one-hundred-dollar gold Dunhill cigar cutters He scowled as I walked in and around the office, studying the various low sofas

“What’s wrong?”

“These sofas,” I said “So low you can’t get up” I sat I was about a foot fro up at Manny Leiber, who loomed like Caesar, astride the world

I grunted myself up and went to collect cushions I placed three of them on top of each other and sat

“What the hell you doing?” Manny scuttled off his desk

“I want to look you in the eye when I talk I hate breaking my neck down there in the pits”