The Dog by Jack Livings

head down and walked out to the elevator bay.
    â€œThat’s the smartest thing you’ve ever said,” she called after him.
    Back at his desk, he began to work up his resignation letter. Keep it simple, he told himself, but an hour later he had only just begun to air his grievances. He worked on it through the afternoon, and when he was satisfied that he’d communicated his opinions on the matters of the paper’s shortsighted appetite for gossip over real news, incestuous hiring practices, inability to recognize and promote talent, and reliance on the fame of its half-wit columnists, he signed it with a flourish and took it to Personnel. From there, he left the building, took a bus across town, and drank at a bar until nightfall, to no benefit other than a slothful heaviness in his legs. When he returned, it was to an almost empty newsroom.
    A few stragglers were gathering up Li Pai’s gifts and stuffing them into plastic garbage bags, which they threw over their shoulders for the trip to the party at the Green Room. A corner of the red farewell banner had peeled off the wall. One of the young men deftly reached up and with a flick of his wrist yanked the entire thing down. He crumpled the heavy paper into a huge ball before jamming it into a gray trash bin full of beer bottles. Li Pai waved on his coterie and stopped at Ning’s desk.
    Li Pai was as stooped as an old scholar, his posture the apostrophe’s hook and bell. His eyes were pricks of black suspended in rheum, magnified by the thick lenses of his stylish tortoiseshell glasses. Time had worn them both down, but Ning had no sympathy for his colleague’s fragility, and he’d lost his appetite for the wandering conversations that inevitably became lectures on Li Pai’s singular experience of the world. He couldn’t remember when he’d finally stopped admiring Li Pai and had given himself over to jealousy, a soothing contempt for everything Li Pai represented: self-promotion, egotism, shallowness.
    â€œThat sums it up, no?” Li Pai said, pointing at the trash bin where the banner was crackling as it unwound itself. When Ning didn’t answer, he said, “To the bar?”
    Ning made a pained face. “Unavoidably detained,” he said. “I’ll be there when I can.”
    Li Pai nodded gravely and gave Ning a pat on the back. “Hang in there,” he said, lingering. “You’ll find something else.”
    â€œAh,” Ning said. “Word’s out.”
    â€œI hope it’s not a show of solidarity,” Li Pai said.
    Ning looked at him suspiciously. “Nothing like that.”
    â€œI could find something for you at Beida. They’ve asked me to lecture in the School of Communications.”
    â€œI think I’d rather not,” Ning said.
    â€œWell, it’s a sad day for journalism. You and I are the last of a breed.”
    â€œMaybe not such a sad day,” Ning said. He’d never considered Li Pai much of a reporter, and he didn’t appreciate the comparison. In his columns Li Pai had proved himself to be a writer whose self-regard far outweighed his concern for the subjects he addressed. He wrote about poverty and corruption only to make it appear that he was a friend of man, a compassionate soul with a tearstained handkerchief in his breast pocket. Ning had found it impossible to read him any longer after Li Pai held a contest inviting readers to spend a week shadowing him at the paper and three hundred thousand people had written essays explaining why they most deserved the honor.
    â€œYou’re not resigning because of what happened with your story? There’s no point in falling on your sword over a little thing like that,” Li Pai said in an avuncular tone that caused Ning to clench his fist underneath the desk.
    Ning shook his head. “It’s time to move on. Simple as that.”
    â€œI see,” Li Pai said thoughtfully. He