In his shirt pocket blinks the small red light of a tape recorder taking down every word.

 

 As the Earl asks, “Who’s the bigger fool?”

 

 The reporter who refuses to invent a meaning for life?

 

 Or the reader who wants it?

 

 And stands ready to accept this meaning presented in the words of a stranger?

 

 

 His voice from behind the paper, the Earl of Slander says, “A journalist has a right . . .

 

 . . . and a duty, to destroy

 

 those golden calves he helps create.”

 

  

 

 Swan Song

 

 A Story by the Earl of Slander

 

 One day, my dog eats some garbage wrapped in aluminum foil and has to get a thousand bucks’ worth of X-rays. The yard behind my apartment building is full of garbage and broken glass. Where people park their cars, puddles of antifreeze wait to poison any dog or cat.

 

 Even with a bald head, the veterinarian looks like some old best friend. Like a kid I grew up with. A smile I saw every day of my childhood. The dimple in his chin and every freckle on his nose, I know them all. The gap between his two front teeth, I know how he could use it to whistle.

 

 Here and now, he’s giving my dog an injection. Standing at a silvery steel table in a cold, white tile room, holding the dog by the skin of its neck, he says something about heartworm.

 

In the phone book, when I found him, I was blind with crying, afraid my dog might die. Still, there was his listing: Kenneth Wilcox, d.V.M. A name I loved, somehow. For some reason. My savior.

 

 Now, pulling back each of the dog’s ears and looking inside, he says something about distemper. Embroidered on the chest pocket of his white coat, it says “Dr. Ken.”

 

 Even the sound of his voice echoes from a long time back. I’ve heard him sing “Happy Birthday.” Shouting “Strike one!” at baseball games.

 

 This is him, some old friend of mine, but too tall, the skin of his eyelids baggy-dark and hanging down. Too fleshy under his chin. His teeth look a little yellow, and his eyes aren’t as bright blue as they should be. He says, “She looks good.”

 

I say, Who does?

 

 “Your dog,” he says.

 

 Still looking at him, his bald head and blue eyes, I ask, “Where did you go to school?”

 

 He says some college in California. Someplace I never heard of.

 

 He was little when I was little, and somehow we grew up together. He had a dog named Skip and walked around barefoot all summer, always going fishing or building a tree house. Looking at him, I can picture one cold afternoon building the perfect snowman while his grandma watches from the kitchen window. I say, “Danny?”

 

 And he laughs.

 

 That same week, I’m pitching a story about him to an editor. About how I found him, found little Kenny Wilcox, the child actor who played Danny on the television showDanny-Next-Doora million years ago. Little Danny, the kid we all grew up with, he’s a vet now. He lives in a tract house in some suburban development. Mows his own lawn. This is him, bald and middle-aged, a little fat and ignored.

 

 This faded star. He’s happy and living in a two-bedroom house. Branching out from each eye, he has laugh lines. He takes pills to control his cholesterol. He’s the first to admit, after those years as the center of attention, he’s a bit of a loner. But he’s happy.

 

 What’s important is, Dr. Ken has agreed. Sure, he’ll do an interview. A little profile for the Sunday Entertainment Section of the newspaper.

 

 The editor I’m pitching to, he twists the end of a ballpoint pen in his ear, digging out wax. Looking worse than bored.

 

 This editor tells me readers don’t want a story about somebody born cute and talented, getting paid a fortune to appear on television, then living happily ever after.

 

 No, people don’t want a happy ending.

 

 People want to read about Rusty Hamer, the little boy onMake Room for Daddywho shot himself. Or Trent Lehman, the cute kid fromNanny and the Professorwho hanged himself on a playground fence. Little Anissa Jones, who played Buffy onFamily Affair,clutching a doll named Mrs. Beasley, then swallowing the biggest overdose of barbiturates in the history of Los Angeles County.

 

 This is what people want. The same reason we go to racetracks to watch the cars crash. Why the Germans say,“Die reinste Freude ist die Schadenfreude.”Our purest joy comes when people we envy get hurt. That most genuine form of joy. The joy you feel when a limousine turns the wrong way down a one-way street.

 

 Or when Jay Smith, the “Little Rascal” known as Pinky, was found stabbed to death in the desert outside Las Vegas.