I finally met Mary’s baby last night. Mary’s baby and Mary’s baby’s huge-ass head. What a monster. I tapped his fontanelle when no one was looking, which was often. “What is going on inside that gigantic head of yours?” I asked. “There is room for so much activity. One day we will sit together at a conference table and you will gaze disdainfully into my eyes and I will realize that you already know everything I’m going to say, everything I’m thinking or will ever think, Q.E.D. the disdain. You’ll know how cheap my thoughts are, how secondhand and profanity-laden, how cliché, how self-centered, how petty, and you’ll know that they’re not going to get any better and so you’re all: Why are we even here having this meeting? But I’ll tell you, Mary’s baby, you may be all-knowing but there will come a time when you’ll have to turn to a guy like me for help, someone with an average-sized head who has better eye-hand coordination, a keener sense of balance, a kind of grace and flexibility that will always elude you. Someone to handle the wet work, to clean up the ugly messes you’ve left all over town. And when I run your gold card through my portable scanner, keying in one zero after another, your enormous head will be filled to capacity with just one single thought: You are an envoy of the devil, Joshua Allen, but you’re the only one who really understands me.”