Everybody knows Joe

By C. M. Kornbluth
At least two persons live in each of us. At least one of them is Joe.
For a young man Cyril Kornbluth has been around a long time—at least in the upper reaches of science fiction and fantasy writing. His Little Black Gag is already accepted as a classic, his collaborations with Judith Merril Mars Child and Frederik Pohl The Space Merchants, novels of high entertainment and worth. We are delighted to present him in a little story that should scare the pants off everybody.
Joe had quite a day for himself Thursday and as usual I had to tag along. If I had a right arm to give I'd give it for a day off now and then. Like on Thursday. On Thursday he really outdid himself.
He woke up in the hotel room and had a shower. He wasn't going to shave until I told him he looked like a bum. So he shaved and then he stood for a whole minute admiring his beauty in the mirror, forgetting whose idea it was in the first place.
So down to the coffee shop for breakfast. A hard-working man needs a good breakfast. So getting ready for a backbreaking day of copying references at the library, he had tomato juice, two fried eggs, three sausages, a sugared doughnut and coffee—with cream and sugar.
He couldn't work that off his pot in a week of ditch-digging under a July sun, but a hard-working man needs a good breakfast. I was too disgusted to argue with him. He's hopeless when he smells that short-order smell of smoking grease, frying bacon and coffee.
He wanted to take a taxi to the library—eight blocks!
Walk, you jerk! I told him. He started to mumble about pulling down six hundred bucks for this week's work and then he must have thought I was going to mention the high-calorie breakfast. To him that's hitting below the belt. He thinks he's an unfortunate man with an affliction—about twenty pounds of it. He walked and arrived at the library glowing with virtue.
Making out his slip at the newspaper room he blandly put down next to firm — The Griffin Press, Inc. —when he knew as well as I did that he was a free lance and hadn't even got a definite assignment from Griffin.