Heading out to a promotional event a friend with a cookbook on the line enticed me to attend, I rode the elevator down with my next-door neighbor who was regaling her friend with the tale of how the two of us had each broken ourselves right around the same time in freaky falls in Eutopia, she in Paris, I in Piedmont. I don’t know about her, but I remember mine every morning when the pain wakes me before the alarm can. Talking about how instantly your life can change put me in a strange frame of mind, so maybe I made too much of what the unexpected flack at the door said as he handed me my name tag: “Just don’t get drunk and get hit by a car.” I laughed it off by responding, “Don’t trust me not to do either.” But the longer I thought about it the more I wondered why a guy with social Tourette’s would choose to make a career of ass-kissing. And I really wondered whether T’dum advised another invitee, one of his pals: “Just don’t get greedy and fuck over your partner.” Except that is how that ugliness actually unfolded.