“I was standing outside the circle. Dave came up to me. ‘You’re not going to fuck us, are you?’ I answered what I always answer: ‘I’m going to write a story; some of the stuff you’ll like, some of the stuff you probably won’t like.’ Jake came up to me. ‘We’ll hunt you down and kill you if we don’t like what you write,’ he said. ‘C. will hunt you down and kill you.’ I looked at Jake. He had what I’d heard people in the military call retired colonel syndrome. A certain inferiority complex and bitterness about not rising to the rank of general. ‘Well, I get death threats like that about once a year, so no worries.’”
