Excerpt:

The only person who had any faith in him was Benji Flores. Benji had been found on the street only a year before when he was twelve. He and his pa had been living in a crate in an alley between 6th and 7th, and when his pa died he got picked up for shoplifting. The cops had sent him to Rosenfeld instead of putting him in jail. Nice of them, Moe thought. Though it was a bit of an inconvenience for Moe, because Benji was annoying as hell.

He did all the usual things annoying younger kids did – followed Moe around, looked up to him (well, not literally; Benji was a good six inches taller than Moe), wanted to spend every minute with him, and agreed with him in a deeply ingratiating way on every issue, even the outrageous ones that Moe made up just to provoke an argument.

But the most irritating thing about Benji was that he cried for Moe. For every rejection, for every setback, Benji would break down in tears, gazing at Moe in the most heartfelt, sorrowful, pitying way, that Moe wanted to punch him, and occasionally did.

It was just part of show business after all. You got rejected, and even when you got a job, you still got rejected sometimes, and fired sometimes, and robbed sometimes, and that was life. And Moe could handle it. He was tough.

At least until he was faced with Benji's tear-filled eyes, and then something in him would snap and he would feel all the hurt that he never let himself feel, and he would feel sorry for himself and he would feel sad and sometimes – not often, but once in a great while he get a little sniffle going himself.

Then he would punch Benji.

Which just made him feel worse.

He shoveled down his ham and spinach and tried to grow. There were auditions at the Palace coming up next week. A few more inches would give him some credibility. If only he didn't look so much like a kid.