"Mr. Weiss?"
                    Seamus faced the top of a bald head, bent over a desk. The head reflected the light from the office window, forming a tick-tack-toe pattern similar to the ubiquitous cross-hatching on Archie Andrew's head. Behind the desk, two men in T-shirts and overalls were trying to lift a file cabinet onto a dolly.
                    The man at the desk lifted his head and ran his fingers through non-existent hair on top of the shiny dome. Enlarged by the man's wire-rim glasses, his penetrating, bright blue eyes, the color of the irises made all the more striking by field of red veins surrounding them, acknowledged Seamus. Though only in his early thirties, the man looked infinitely old and sage-like to Seamus. And tired, infinitely tired.
                    "Yeah," answered the bald man lethargically, "I'm Weiss," and proceeded to return his attention to a pile of papers on his desk. He made Seamus think of an oracle skrying arcane knowledge from the characters upon the page, as if they weren't mere words at all, but markings of a magical language in which every word and every line of every letter had symbolic import decipherable only by the most knowledgeable of initiates.
                    Then, looking upside-down at the sheet, Seamus could see that the typewritten page was a script, a comic book script, like the one that Mr. Weiss had sent him months ago. At the top, he read "Jim Cracky - On the Trail of the Desperate Coyote Gang". Jim Cracky Westerns was one of the comic books that Weiss edited. It was based on the cowboy actor of the title, the poor man's Gabby Hayes, who appeared in a series of poverty row westerns throughout the 40s. But Seamus thought they had discontinued that title after the performer died late last year, in 1952. If fact, he heard that the man who played the grizzled old prospector, saddle tramp, drunkard or sidekick at the bottom of so many Saturday afternoon bills was poisoned by his lover, the teenage daughter of his maid, who claimed in court that the old man had forced her to commit unnatural acts. Seamus was told this tale by Rusty Schwan, his co-worker, until last week, at Bigg's Pharmacy in Painesville, OH; Rusty said a lot of things that Seamus found strange and unlikely. When Seamus first started working at Bigg's, he thought Rusty must be full of bull, but during the year or so he worked with the unpleasant youth, Seamus never caught him in a lie, and many of he strange stories were corroborated, or at least never contradicted, in various periodicals sold at the pharmacy.
                    As Seamus watched, Weiss went through the script and changed the name Jim Cracky to Saddlebag Sam wherever it appeared, as well as replacing the name of his trusty mule Gertrude to Maudy.
                    Seamus, unsure of what to say and feeling eyestrain from reading upside-down, stood quietly for a moment. Weiss ignored him. While he thought of something to say, the younger man watched as the pair in overalls grunted and strained and managed to drag the cabinet onto the dolly. It looked to Seamus like it would fall off. The movers also looked to be too small for such manual labor, and from their appearances, they reminded Seamus of two members of the Newsboy Legion, a series published by National comics when he was in his teens. Gabby, the one with the high forehead, large jowls and curly hair, much like a younger version of the current Vice-President, was valiantly try to push the cabinet into a less precarious position on the hand cart. Unbeknown to him, Scrapper, who had round features beneath the red, straight hair under his large cap, was leaning on the other side of the cabinet, wiping sweat off of his face with a grimy handkerchief and mumbling obscenities to himself. Seamus turned his attention back to the bald head.
                    "Um," he started. The blue and red eyes turned toward him. "I'm Seamus McMahon."
                    The eyes did a pirouette in their respective sockets as Weiss took in a deep breath and seemed to stare right through Seamus. The older man grimaced in thought for a moment and made a clicking sound with his tongue, then bit his lower lip and looked Seamus right in the eye.
                    "You didn't get the telegram," he said. This was not a question, but a statement of resignation that came out with a sigh.
                    "What telegram?" asked Seamus before he realized how stupid he sounded.
                    Scuffling noises came from behind the desk, but Seamus was staring at Weiss. Scrapper muttered another expletive and hissed, “Get off my damned foot.”
                    "Sorry," muttered Gabby.
                    "Well, kid," said Weiss. "I sent you a telegram two days ago. To Painsville, Ohio. That's right, isn't it?"
                    "Yeah," said Seamus quietly. Scrapper and Gabby had worked their way from behind the desk and were passing him. "But I had already left."
                    "I kind of figured that, kid, seeing as you're in front of me."
                    Weiss took another deep breath.
                    "Look, the company went under,” he said. “It's over. Hey, I was doing OK, not great, but OK. The comics were selling, at least. I wouldn't have hired you if they weren't. The markets been drying up, but we were holding out, even with Wertham and that crowd on our backs. But some schmuck in the company decided to divert funds into some kind of scheme or another. Hell, nobody tells me anything. I'm just the funnybooks editor, right? Now I gotta try to crank out the last few titles with some leftover scripts and reprints. 'We paid for 'em, we use 'em,' they say. Give me strength."
                    As he spoke, Weiss' voice diminished from a forte to a pianissimo. During the monologue, Seamus ascertained that he was out of the job he came to New York for. Then he wondered what a schmuck was. After that, he wondered what he was going to do.
                    "I just got an apartment," he said, not really thinking about why he said it. The day before he had located a cockroach infested room situated beneath a stairway in a Lower East Side tenement building.
                    "Jeez, kid." Weiss looked genuinely sympathetic. He stared through Seamus for a minute. "Look, let me see what I can do for you... I'll get you some sort of job. Hell, I was willing to hire you sight unseen, and I have more brains than most the jerks in this business. Though I don't know why I didn't become a doctor like my poor mother wanted."
                    This last sentence was directed at the ceiling.
                    "Watch out, chowderhead!" yelled Scrapper from the hallway.
                    "Sorry," muttered Gabby.
                    Weiss looked at Seamus, who in turn faced him glassy eyed.
                    "It'll work out, kid," said Weiss. "I'll get you something. In fact, I have an idea."
                    Seamus nodded.
                    "Just give me a number where to reach you, OK?"
                    Weiss' tired attempt at a smile was more pathetic than comforting. Seamus nodded again.
                    "Holy Mary and Joseph in the freaking manger!" screamed a voice from the hallway, followed by the reverberating crashing of a file cabinet falling down three flights of stairs.
                    "Sorry," a second voice muttered.

                    Seamus sat on his bed, feeling the springs through the thin mattress and looking at the plain, brown envelope next to him on the rumpled blanket. He self-consciously looked around the room, its simple squalor emphasized by the naked light bulb hanging on a threadbare chord from the slanted ceiling (the room was located beneath a stairwell). The light wasn't bright, but it seemed unduly harsh in the cramped room, which in fact was a large closet. The bulb illuminated one side of the small metal frame bed, a dresser with no legs, a wooden chair that looked to have been stolen from a grammar school many years before and a rumpled metal trashcan. The other side of these furnishings (it was a furnished room) were hidden in darkness, giving the area an air of expressionist gloom.
                    Seamus looked at the envelope, then looked away again, as if he were playing a game of some sort. He had returned from Weiss' office an hour before, and felt like he would feel better if he could go out, to continue to explore the new city. But Mr. Weiss said he would call him, and Seamus had given him the number for the pay phone in the hallway of the tenement. The landlady, Mrs. O'Reilly, told him he could get calls there, "but keep it short," she admonished him grumpily, as if he had already broken this rule in the past. So he was trapped in the room for the time being, alone with the large, plain brown envelope, which he would sometimes look at, then pointedly turn away from.
                    Finally, he picked up the envelope, opened the flap, and poured its contents onto the bed. Out slid three small booklets and a photographic print. The booklets had vaguely innocuous covers, but a casual glance at the photograph revealed the image of a nude women.
                    That morning, after his first night in his new room, Seamus took a walk through the neighborhood. Though the trauma was not as powerful as the day before, when his train first arrived to the metropolis and he wandered lower Manhattan in a daze, he hadn't overcome the shock of the urban landscape, the throng of the milling crowds, the looming architecture, the seemingly endless variety in the people and places. Seamus had been to Cleveland a few times, but even that hadn't prepared him for Manhattan. New York was any downtown he had ever been to before raised exponentially. And he had never lived in a city proper. It struck him that he was now living the city, not visiting.
                    He stood on a street corner, attempting to slow down the traffic through force of will, or perhaps to try to adjust his small town metabolism to the pace of city life. Like a Warner Brothers cartoon short, the action whirled around him, slow enough to understand what the general action was, but too fast to take in details in an orderly fashion. A moment consisted of a woman's hat, a horn blowing, an old man's rheumy eyes, a shiny car, a candy wrapper, the smell of fried foods, a small child running, endless brick and concrete, cigar smoke and the tones, if not the actual words, of passing conversations. Seamus looked for something to focus his attention on, to block out the rest of the sensual onslaught.
                    As he stopped to read the prices from a hot dog cart, Seamus noticed a shop toward the middle of the block. It looked to be just a junk shop, dealing in old odds and ends, but what caught his eye was on a table next to the doorway. From that distance, to the untrained eye, it might have been an ordinary pile of books or any old paper product, but Seamus knew from the size and shaped of the booklets and the garish colors of the top item, it was a pile of pulp magazines. The cover image and the title type were too far away for the naked eye to register, but the impression was unmistakable to the addict. He quickly made a beeline for the building, trying to squelch the rising hope in his chest, that perhaps it was a trove of science fiction magazines, all inexpensive and issues he hadn't read.
                    Stepping into the shop, not looking in any direction but his quarry, Seamus felt a pang of disappointment as the cover of the top magazine came into focus and he could see the image of a cowboy riding on a horse, twisting around in what looked to be a highly improbably posture to shoot his six-gun at a mass of pursuing Indians. High Western Adventure was the title. Below that were two issues of Trail Riders, one Saddle Justice, a True Western Romance and a beat up copy of Tumbleweed Action.
                    Seamus sighed. He then looked up and took in the entire shop. It was piled high with what looked to about ten separate houses worth of belongings: furniture, clothes, pictures, rugs, books, silverware, records, glasses, tools, and more domestic items that held no interest to him.
                    "Can I help you?" asked a high, reedy voice.
                    Seamus turned and saw a small, old man. He reminded him of some sort of gnome or dwarf from a fairy tale, drawn up and wizened, yet with intelligent, smiling eyes, a huge shock of white hair and a quickness about his movements, as he seemed to hop from behind the counter to greet the young man.
                    "Hello," stammered Seamus.
                    "Looking for anything in particular? Chances are we have it."
                    The man laughed warmly. It put Seamus at ease. And he figured he might just chance embarrassment and ask for what he really wanted.
                    "I was wondering..." he started.
                    "Yes?" asked the small man, smiling.
                    "Well, I was looking for some older, um, well... comic books."
                    Instead of looking at Seamus as if he were an imbecile, with an open grin, the old man winked and said, "Follow me."
                    The little man led Seamus around the counter to a hallway at the back of the room. It had an old curtain hanging in the doorway with a faded calico pattern. Inside the hallway, the man pulled a cardboard box out from under a desk.
                    "Here," he said smiling, "I think you'll find what you want." The elf winked and left the hallway.
                    Seamus looked down in the box and to his shock, there weren't old issues of Flash Quarterly, Smash, All-American, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories or even Pep. There weren't even comic books at all in the container, in Seamus' reckoning, but instead, a large pile of Tijuana Bibles; at least, that was the name the boys in his high school called them. They were tiny comic books, eight pages long, with one panel per page, and they featured explicit sex and nothing much else. Seamus' sole experience with the pocket-sized booklets was a time in school when Willy Bromble, the school bully, passed one around chemistry class. The tiny booklet featured Greta Garbo, or at least a crudely drawn caricature of her, and its pornographic images were still etched into Seamus' brain eight years later.
                    Below the 8-page comics in the box were photographs. Most of them were obviously very old, ten or twenty years old if not more. Most of them featured women, usually by themselves, but sometimes two or three—a few had men and women together. All had nudity and quite a few involved sexual acts. One featured a horse, and Seamus consciously did not look at it closely. Soon, he noticed that he was getting an erection, and he was shocked by the man's high voice behind him.
                    "The comics are fifty cents and the photos are a buck."
                    "And," said the little man, turning to look behind himself into the store, "if you don't mind, please make it quit, OK? You know what I mean?"
                    Seamus' mind went blank. He was starting his new job today. He could afford it. So he quickly grabbed three of the booklets and one of the photos.
                    Paying the little man for the items was a blur. Soon Seamus stood outside the building with the envelope in his hand. When he returned to his room, he stuck it in the bottom drawer of the dresser. At that moment he was shocked with himself, more from the greed he felt for desiring these objects, feeling the need to own them, than for the lust they brought out in him.
                    And now, a few hours later, Seamus sat on his uncomfortable bed, lining up his harem of onastic delights, realizing that he really couldn't afford them—that thought made his stomach ache. He gave less than a cursory glance at the covers of each of the Tijuana Bibles before moving on to the photograph.
                    The photo was obviously old. There was something about the grain of the film, the style of the subject's hair, the furnishings of the background that reminded Seamus of pictures from his parents old photo album of aunts and uncles when they were, like him, in their early 20s. It was a photograph of a young woman, maybe Seamus' age, possibly younger, reclining in a stuffed chair. She was naked except for a sheer cloth, possibly a garment or perhaps a bedcover of some type, which lay next to her and covered part of her leg. She leaned back, seeming to look at someone or something outside of the camera's periphery, her arms hung at her side, relaxed, one leg pulled up beneath the other. His eyes repeatedly followed the shape of her pelvis, the curve of her thighs, the smoothness of her neck. Seamus was fascinated by her breasts, something he had never seen in a photo or in his daily experiences, as well as the patch of public hair curling to hide in shadow a tantalizing shape between her legs. Fascinating, though maybe not as appealing, were the patches of hair beneath the woman's arms. But most of all, Seamus was drawn to her eyes, round and open, resting a face he found naturally appealing, with its cheekbones and chin that were both strong and yet feminine, and its thin lips pulled into a friendly smile. Seamus' mind would switch back and forth between exploring the details of the photo and taking in the image as a whole, wondering who this person was and what were the circumstances involved in making this picture.
                    Suddenly, Seamus heard a sound outside his room and quickly covered his lap and the objects of his desire with the rough blanket. There was a knock at the door, a pause, then his door slowly opened about a foot. The cabbage-like head of Mrs. O'Reilly appeared through the opening, staring at him with hard, unreadable eyes.
                    "Got a call," she grimly intoned. "Don't you be making it long."
                    "Thanks," squeaked Seamus. He sat and waited for her to leave.
                    She stood staring at him.
                    "Well, aren't you going to take it?" she asked.
                    "Oh," said Seamus, as if he had forgotten something important. "Yes." He jumped out of bed, swiftly turning his back to the woman as he adjusted his pants. Then, with what little dignity he could muster, he slunk to the door and slouched toward the phone.
                    "Kid."
                    It was Weiss.
                    "Hi."
                    "Look, kid. I think I have a gig lined up for you. Nothing great, but it's better than the breadline, right?"
                    "Uh, sure."
                    "I got you working at Family, as assistant to an old friend of mine. It'll more or less be the job you'd be doing with me. You'll still be the assistant to the editor of the comic book line."
                    "Family?"
                    "Family Entertainment. They publish... What do they publish? Can't think of a title. Look, kid, to be honest, they mostly publish bullshit, OK?"
                    "Oh."
                    "And I may as well be up front about Schwartzinger, your new boss. He's a schmuck. I mean, yeah, we've known each other since we were in school, but he's still a schmuck. It's a job though. I'll tell you if I find anything better. Hell, if I find something better, I might take myself. Heh heh. Seriously, kid, the markets drying up. For folks like you and me, who actually give a crap about this... what's the word I want? Medium? Sure, medium, whatever. ...for people who give a crap about this medium, these are tough times, you know? Television's killing us. Maybe I should do like Eisner and do something for the military. Specialize, right?"
                    "Mr. Weiss?"
                    "Yeah?"
                    "Can I ask you something?"
                    "Sure, kid. Shoot."
                    "What's a schmuck?"