I walked into Lisa’s office and flopped into the visitor’s chair. Leaning my head on the back of the chair, I skewed my eyes around to look at her. Head bent over the document on her desk, her fingers twined in her long disheveled hair, she said, “What?” She hadn’t looked up. I knew she didn’t want to acknowledge my presence. “The budget on the new book cover and interior…what are you going to need?”

Now she looked up with a wry grin and opened her mouth. Before she could say it, I blurted out, “There’s not enough time, Lisa, Editorial is 3 weeks behind, it went back to the copy editor after the last revision, and the layout is already thousands over budget…” my voice quieted at the look on her face.

“Calm down. He doesn’t want the big image cover. He’s decided he wants this.” At “this” she tossed a magazine face down into my lap. I looked down. The back cover was black with little fluorescent… things floating on it. What was it? The items looked like little neon candies or, well, actually they looked like little squishy gnomes. I raised my eyebrows and looked up at her. “He wants little gnomes on it?” The new on-line dating guide would have little fluorescent gnome girls and boys on it? I giggled and then laughed, but the laughter sounded more hysterical than funny. The lot of us had tried and failed to talk him out of doing this book. The more we worked on it the more it looked like a $50,000 sink hole. I picked up the magazine and tossed it onto the table, the back cover flying open as it landed. There in all her lurid glory was a very buxom naked woman, suggestively posed with the words, “Just talk to me!” emblazoned across the picture.