The night Krysztof and my father sat at our dining room table, however, Krysztof had received yet another rejection letter for his book. He sat raging at my father, for not being able to sell the book, and at the publishers, for not buying the book.

"You have to understand," My dad said to Krysztof, "Hardly anyone buys books of poetry anymore."

"I understand shit," Krysztof said, thumping the table. "This is what I do. These poems are as good as any you will find in the bookstore. Better. You must be able to convince someone to buy these, Daniel. That is what you do."

"Krysztof," my father said, "The bottom line is that no one is going to publish these poems right now. If you were Elie Wiesel, you could sell these poems. But you're nobody here. No one knows you. No publisher is going to throw money away publishing poems that no one's going to read."

That set Krysztof off for another ten minutes on the stupidity of my father, the publishing world, and the American people in general, for not recognizing genius when it sat arrayed before them. Dad sat there calmly, waiting for Krysztof to take a breath.

When he did, my dad jumped in. "You're not listening to what I'm saying, Krysztof," he said. "I know these poems are masterworks. That's not in dispute. The problem is not the poems, it's you. No one knows who you are."

"Who cares about me," Krysztof said. "The poems, they speak for themselves."

"You're a great man, Krysztof," my father said. "But you know diddly about the American public." And then my father told Krysztof a plan that would thereafter be known as The Trojan Horse.

The plan was simple. In order to sell Krysztof's poems, people had to know who Krysztof was first. Dad accomplished this by convincing Krysztof, after much arguing and protestations of humiliation, to take a lullaby that he had written decades earlier to amuse his daughter, and publish it as a children's book. The book, The Dreamers and the Sleepers, sold millions, much to Krysztof's horror and my father's delight.

During the publicity tour for the book, Krysztof's Holocaust story was splashed across the features pages of every large and mid-sized daily in the country. From that, my father was able to wrangle a made-for-television movie on Krysztof's story out of CBS. It was the most widely-watched television show that month. Krysztof was embarrassed (he was played by Lee Majors) but also both rich and famous.

"There," my dad said. "Now we can sell your book of poems." And he did.

I needed a Trojan Horse. There had to be some back door way to slip the Yherajk through, like my dad did with Krysztof. But I had no idea what it was. It's one thing to sell a book of poems. It's another thing entirely to introduce a planet to the thing they've hoped for and feared for the last century.

The doorbell rang. Ralph looked at me sadly. I patted his flank gently, and then we went to answer the door.

I glanced through the window into my office. "Tell me that's not Tea Reader I see in there," I said.

"All right," Miranda said. "That's not Tea Reader you see in there."

"Thank you for conforming to my reality," I said.

"Not at all," Miranda said. "It's an honor and a privilege."

I grabbed my door knob, took a deep breath, and went into my office.

If nothing else, Tea Reader was heart-stoppingly beautiful; half Hawaiian, half Hungarian, five feet ten inches, and naturally possessed of the sort of proportions that most women insist exist only on foot-high plastic dolls. Her record company publicist once drunkenly confided in me that his company estimated at least 45% of Tea's record sales were to boys aged thirteen through fifteen, who bought them for the CD insert that featured Tea rising for the waters of the Pacific, clad in a thin t-shirt and a thong bikini bottom, both a particularly transparent shade of tan.

I drunkenly confided to him that, when I had inherited her from my former podmate, I held the poorly masked hope that she might be one of those actresses who occasionally slept with their agents. Then I got to know her. I learned to be glad that she was not.

"Hello, Tea," I said.

"Hello, Tom, you miserable fuckhead," Tea said.

"Always a pleasure to see you, too, Tea," I said. I walked to my desk and set down. "Now," I said. "How can I help you?"

"You can explain to me why I suddenly seem to be represented by Little Miss Hysterical over here." Tea motioned to the far chair in the corner, where Amanda Hewson sat, crying. At the mention of her existence, Amanda let out an audible sob and lifted her feet, in an attempt to curl into a fetal position while still sitting. The chair was getting in the way.

"Amanda is a full agent here at the company," I said. "And she's quite good."

"Bullshit," Tea said. Amanda gave another sob. Tea rolled her eyes dramatically and shouted over her shoulder at Amanda. "Could you please shut the fuck up?" She said. "I'm trying to talk my real agent over here, and it's hard enough without you crying a fucking river."

Amanda exploded from her seat like a flock of birds flushed out of the underbrush, and attempted to flee the room. She grabbed at the door, pulled it, and whacked herself on the side of the face. I winced; that was going to leave a mark. Amanda wailed and sprinted towards her pod. Tea watched the scene and then turned back to me. She had the expression of the cat who ate the canary and then threw it up in her owner's favorite shoes.

"Where were we?" she said.

"That wasn't very nice," I said, mildly.

"I'll tell you what's not very fucking nice, Tom," Tea said. "It's not nice to get back from Honolulu, where I've been visiting my family, and having a message from Mandy, telling me how excited she is to be working with me." From her sinister stretch, Tea straightened up, preternaturally perky. Her voice became a dead-on ringer for Amanda's Girl Scout-like tone. "'I have your album! I love to listen to it while I'm exercising!'" Tea slouched again. "Great. Add that to the half that are whacking off to my picture on the cover, sister."

"It's actually only forty five percent," I said.

Tea's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Forty five percent whacking off," I said. "Your record company's own estimate. Tea, Amanda's working with me. She's my assistant."

"I thought Miss Bitch back there was your assistant," Tea said, jerking a thumb towards Miranda's desk. "She almost didn't let me in to your office today. I was getting ready to smack her."

Before getting her act together and working her way through college, Miranda spent a reasonable portion of her teen years gang-banging in East LA. One night, at a company party, Miranda showed me her collection of scars, inflicted by razors in a number of cat fights. The other girls got it worse, she said. I didn't suspect Tea realized how close to death she had gotten this morning.

"Miranda is my administrative assistant," I said. "Amanda is working with me with some of my clients."

"Well, I don't want to work with her," Tea said.

"Why not?"

"Hello? Tom? Did you not see Miss Mandy in here today? What a fucking crybaby."

"How did she get that way, Tea?" I asked.

"Beats me," Tea said. "We were just sitting here, waiting for you, and I was just telling her that there was no fucking way on the planet she was going to be my agent."

"How long were you in here before I got here?"

Tea shrugged. "A half hour, forty five minutes."

"I see," I said. "And you don't think being shat on for three-quarters of an hour is a good reason to get upset."

"Hey," Tea sat up again and jabbed a finger at me, "You're the one that put her in that situation. Don't get angry at me because I went off on her a little."