I ducked, Cerberus pounced, and Mr. Waciejowski screamed like a dying ferret--a soothing and pleasant sound under most other circumstances, but now only distracting. I felt the rush of air against my face as the crowbar skimmed my head. The man wielding it was in a black three-piece suit and built like a Texas linebacker. His mass seemed to bend space-time in the parking lot as he barreled down on me. All I could see was nearly seven feet of Armani silk. I stood upright and brought my knee into his groin and gave him a swift elbow in the small of his back and a fist to the base of his skull. Now, I wasn't the biggest guy in the world, but I certainly wasn't the smallest either. And I was also acutely aware of how much damage I could do to another human being. But this hulking mass in Italian finery didn't even seem phased. The blows I sent this guy should have dropped him like a bag of wet cement, but he just turned and hamstringed me with that damn crowbar. I fell so hard that one of my teeth chipped. The box flew out of my grip and landed just a few feet away. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Pete on the ground, fumbling with his cell phone while Cerberus mauled another suit trying to sneak up behind me. If the fall hadn't knocked the wind out of me, seeing Cerberus tear into this guy certainly would have. The dog was all fangs and fur, making sounds like construction machinery. Thick and heavy. The guy was screaming all kinds of nonsense as he kept his shredded arms in front of his face and neck. Blood and fabric flew about as the animal tossed its head in violent arcs. How long was the fight probably going for? Pick the correct answer from the following options: A. two hours B. Not long, few minutes C. not enough information D. 45 minutes
B

That day, my mother picked me up from school, wearing the yellow sundress and shawl I remembered from our trip with Father the year before. She looked just like she did most days back then--a glamour queen, a movie star ("Just like Lena Horne," my friend Chloe had once said, "only darker--oh, sorry, Leah!"), but today her beauty somehow had a harder, more defiant edge to it. I could smell the expensive Dior perfume as soon as I opened the door, which surprised me, because my mom was usually fastidious about not getting perfume on her clothes. She was wearing her bug glasses--huge dark things with lenses that bulged out like fly eyes and reflected my face like a fun-house mirror. She had tied a yellow silk scarf around her hair and was taking deep pulls on a cigarette held between two immaculately manicured fingers. Only I knew about the nicotine stains she carefully covered with her special order "forest sable" cream each morning. Tiffany, a stupid but vicious senator's daughter who I had the misfortune of sharing a classroom with, suddenly dashed from inside the school, her face flushed. "Hello, Mrs. Wilson," she called. Before my mother could respond, she giggled and ran back to three of her friends waiting beyond the door. I could hear them laughing, but I was glad I couldn't understand their words. They were all fascinated with my mother--the black housekeeper who dressed like Katharine Hepburn and drove a Cadillac, whose daughter's "light toffee" skin indicated that she might just like her coffee with a lot of cream. Sometimes I hated those girls. "Get in the car, Leah," my mother said. Her already husky voice was pitched low, as though she'd been crying. That made me nervous. Why was she here? "Ma, Chloe was going to show me her dad's new camera. Can't I go home on the bus?" My mom pulled on the cigarette until it burned the filter, and then ground it into the car ashtray--already filled with forty or so butts. She always emptied out the ashtray each evening. What is probably true about the mother? Pick the correct answer from the following options: A. She behaved unusually on this day B. not enough information C. She was the queen D. She was a movie star
A

Q: September 2006, and deep in the bowels of the Adam Street private members' club in London a very special group of people is crammed into a private room, supping imported Spanish beer from a free bar. The value - on paper at least - of the companies owned by those squeezed into this tiny, boiling space would dwarf the debt of a small African nation. Among those present are some of the key players in Europe's Internet industry. The content creators, the entrepreneurs, the inventors, the investors; these are the new media moguls. And tonight they're in their element. I'm hiding at the back of the room getting slowly drunk with the event's organiser, an entrepreneur who helped raise a ridiculous sum of money for a business networking site that had projected revenues of precisely zero. His mantra, he tells me, is 'revenue is the enemy'. It's not clear what that means, but I have to admit it sounds great. A microphone is being passed around and we're watching and listening as a succession of young - mostly under forty - men - they're mostly men - rattle off their CVs and their future plans. 'He,' whispers my drinking buddy, pointing the neck of his beer bottle at a short, well-groomed man wearing a yellow checked jacket and bright red trousers, 'was in the FT yesterday. Apparently BT are going to buy the company he co-founded for half a billion dollars.' 'Fuck,' I half-whisper back. One habit you soon pick up, hanging out with dot com entrepreneurs, is swearing. 'That's a terrible fit. It's like Friends Reunited* all over again. What the hell are BT going to do with them?' 'Nothing.' 'Nothing?' 'No, the story's bullshit. Totally made up. And they fucking printed it. ' 'Fuck.' 'Of course they printed it. They called the investors to check it out, but they refused to comment. So they ran it as a "rumour". And why not? It wouldn't exactly be the most outrageous deal of the year, would it?' He has a point. Who tells the narrator that "revenue is the enemy"? Pick the correct answer from the following options: A. An inventor. B. A club member. C. not enough information D. An entrepreneur.
A: D