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Rufus advanced very quickly, a Horatio Alger story in short, and became
manager by the time he was twenty-eight, a post which he had held for six
years now.

He had also gotten married, and he was very much in love with his wife,
Millie. He had become handsome in proportion with his success. She had
been absolutely gorgeous all through her life, but she had been recently
bothered by her increasing weight. They understood each other in a way
which is rare, and their relationship was precious to them and somewhat of
an inspiration to their friends. They were special. In fact, Rufus had lately
realized that his whole life had been special and fullfilling. Until today,

Today had been bad to start off with. He had had a large fight with his
wife over something he couldn't remember now. It was a real blow because
it was their first major fight in four years of marriage.

Ironically, his wife was going crazy without either of them knowing. She
was (and had always feared being) over-weight. So lately she had gotten
some diet pills-potent speed-to lose weight; and it was making her go
crazy. She was doing it out of love for Rufus; she wanted very badly to look
good for him.

"I wonder what happened this morning to cause that fight," she said out
loud to herself, very quickly, over and over again throughout the morning.
She couldn't stop thinking about the fight all morning even though it didn't
bother her a whole lot. In the afternoon she tried to forget it because it
made her restive but then everything made her restive in the afternoons.
That was when the pills started to wear off, but she wasn't anywhere near
aware of it. Now she was on the brink of a sanity-rending case of anxiety.
She began to feel a bit shattered by the fight, and she couldn't remember
the cause of it.

The fight had given Rufus an unshakable case of the blues. He had
known by now several unshakable cases before, but this one-these "I'm
losing my baby an' I don't know why!" blues were really being a pain in
the ass.

It all happened when one of the quasi-suave under-secretaries of Hard-
ware & Housewares walked in and noticed a tear on his manager's left
cheek. Rufus cleared his face of that one element betraying his well-kept