"I was so rich that I made friends out of soap. The family servants would take turns making the voices for my friends. The friends I liked the best, I would stroke their faces until their faces caved in."

I showed it to my agent while two brawny white men in my employ fanned us with the giant leafs of a local plant, Manticorus, which manages to eat a few of the locals each growing season.

"I like it," she said. "It's terribly sad, though."

"Yes," I said, sipping a gin-drenched lemonade. "Yes, I suppose it is."

On my cocktail napkin, I doodled a cartoon image of me as a strapping young lad of seven, accidentally stabbing a village boy to death. Maybe it would work for the cover image. The family, by village tradition, had to adopt me as their son. I was to replace the boy I had killed.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. There were plenty of servants to do the other child's-- and now my-- chores. I put up posters of pop idols on the mud walls of my corner of the home's single room. I gave gifts to my new parents until they became fat and idle and then I just stopped coming around. Just sent food baskets.

"I figure another four paragraphs ought to round out the first chapter, don't you?" I asked my agent. My lemonade slipped out of my hand and spilled into the dirt. "Then, in chapter two, I'll cover a few life lessons then get on to how I got so rich and how everyone likes me."

My agent sat mutely, being fanned.

So I fired the man who was supposed to supply her voice. And I made a note to include that incident in a later chapter illustrating the adversity I must overcome.

It's not easy being rich because all real people are bastards.