they gave me a nice note—very formal, very neat and clean, VERY gushing—which did not mention the fifty, except as a secretarial notation; enclosure.  You know? Grant looks just like I feel, that frowning, bearded, granite face with the genuinely suspicious (or artificially imperious) gaze—I can't decide which way it is that he and I are looking at the world...  Actually I think it's both. 

I try to see the company president as a human being doing a decent thing, and I'm sure that's exactly what this gesture is.  But I can't help feeling like it is a bribe—which is even better than a bonus because maybe it means that the noise I made was heard.  That never happened when I was small, and I never thought it would. 

I'm thinking about depositing the fifty, and returning it as a check, just so I can refuse it but still prove (sort of) that they gave it to me.  Cash payoffs make me nasty, even though I like dead presidents. 

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