“I love the business,” my father said. “It’s dog eat dog. It’s a crap game in an alley for six million bucks. Where else can a man like me make the kind of money I make? I have the right brand image. You know that as well as I do. Wall Street would kick me out on my ass. But at my age I don’t worry about money anymore. I’ve been reading Tolstoy. Every man feels he has a novel in him. He feels he has a novel and a Eurasian mistress. Tolstoy makes me want to write a novel. Your mother was ill a good deal of the time but she had something these bitches today couldn’t touch. My secretary? Maxine? She has soap under her fingernails. Seven out of eight times I look at her fingernails I see little slivers of soap. Compare that with your mother. At my age you come to realize that you did everything wrong. No matter who you are, everything you did was wrong. Maybe I’ll turn Catholic.”