I’ve been the guy who’s around.

That’s a real job and it’s not your job and I’m not competing with you for it.

“But I’m not going anywhere, and if you spend the next two years trying to make me disappear, the only person who’s going to feel it is him.

He’s known me since he was four.”

I said something stiff.

And Denny said, “Also, for what it’s worth — she never ran you down.

Not one time in two and a half years.

I asked, once, early on, because you’d want to know what you’re dealing with.

And she said, he didn’t know, and that’s a long story.”

That stopped me.