‘That’s right,’ said Earl. ‘But I have a dilemma at this point; a real hard one.’ He was solemn again. ‘My daughter is trying to make the national volleyball team and she has a series of real important games over the next year. Hell, I don’t know whether to go for the embassy or root for my daughter.’

‘Earl,’ said Patrick earnestly, ‘I don’t think there’s anything more important than being a good dad.’

Earl was visibly moved. ‘I appreciate that advice, Paddy, I really do.’

The flight was coming to an end. Earl made some remarks about how you always met ‘high-quality’ people on Concorde. At the airport terminal Earl took the US citizens’ channel, and Patrick headed for the Aliens’.

‘Goodbye, friend,’ shouted Earl with a big wave, ‘see you around!’

‘Every parting,’ snarled Patrick under his breath, ‘is a little death.’

2

‘What is the purpose of your visit, sir? Business or pleasure?’

‘Neither.’

‘I’m sorry?’ She was a pear-shaped, slug-coloured, short-haired woman wearing big glasses and a dark blue uniform.

‘I’m here to collect my father’s corpse,’ mumbled Patrick.

‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t catch that,’ she said with official exasperation.

‘I’m here to collect my father’s corpse,’ Patrick shouted slowly.

She handed back his passport. ‘Have a nice day.’

The rage that Patrick had felt after passing through passport control eclipsed his usual terror of Customs (What if they stripped him? What if they saw his arms?).

And so here he was again, slumped in the back of a cab, in a seat often repaired with black masking tape, but still opening occasionally onto small craters of yellow foam, back in a nation that was dieting its way to immortality, while he still dieted his way in the opposite direction.

As his taxi bounced and squeaked along the freeway, Patrick started to register reluctantly the sensations of re-entry into New York. There was of course a driver who spoke no English, and whose lugubrious photograph confirmed the suicidal gloom which the back of his neck could only hint at. The neighbouring lanes bore witness to the usual combination of excess and decay. Enormous battered cars with sloppy engines, and black-windowed limos, swarmed into the city, like flies on their favourite food. Patrick stared at the dented hubcap of an old white station wagon. It had seen so much, he reflected, and remembered nothing, like a slick amnesiac reeling in thousands of images and rejecting them instantly, spinning out its empty life under a paler wider sky.