Stony raised his eyebrows. The waitress dropped a bill face up on the table. "More grass I need like a third nut, you know? So Reynard takes me into these private rooms down another wing, the rich vegetables' ward. He introduces me to all these guys, runs down their schedules with the john, the showers, physical therapy, occupational therapy, the whole shtick. Half these guys looked like they needed gardeners instead of doctors. He's tellin' me some of the life stories of these cats when we're outside the rooms. One guy was the head of the psychology department at Yeshiva University, that guy I was tellin' you about before with the sixty-two Ph.D.s. Another guy played baseball with the New York Highlanders, that was the Yankees before they was the Yankees. This guy, forget about it. He looked like a scrotum. He was all wrinkled and scrunched up." Stony screwed up his face as he talked. "He had these old team pictures all over the room, baseball players with handlebar 'staches an' striped beanies. I swear, Butler, I don't know what I'd do if that was me. If I was a fuckin' professional athlete reduced to that. I didn't wanna ask which one a those guys in the pictures was him because I didn't think I could take it. Another guy's that lawyer I was tellin' you about—'Gimme justice'—you know, I'm lookin' at these guys an' I can see how you really gotta keep it in your head that there's a mind workin' in all that busted machinery there, you know? I really can understand how somebody workin' in a hospital for a few years can blank on that, but you look into those eyes, the whole fuckin' story's in those eyes, man. They are real fuckin' people, man, an' they are in fuckin' agony, an' those fuckin' spies and Bimis come there, man, an' they're treatin' 'em like potted plants or like infants with brains like BBs, an' those eyes are screamin', man, they're screamin' I AM. I'm a doctor. I'm a lawyer. I'm a fucker. I'm a baseball player. I'm a goddamn human being, an' all they get is 'Oh Mees-tah Roo-bon-steen, you make in you bed a-gain, you bod, bod boy.' It makes you wanna vomit, Butler, it makes you wanna vomit."

"That's the way it goes." Butler eased himself away from the table.

"Butler, if I ever got like that, and I asked you to check me out, would you do me the solid?"

"If I had the strength, I'd probably be suckin' wind myself by then."

13

TUESDAY, 8:00 A.M. Stony sat on the narrow locker bench scraping crud from the corners of his eyes. He had half changed into his hospital whites. The other orderlies were dressing, drinking from hip flasks of Old Mr. Boston apricot brandy and bullshitting around in general.

"Hey." Reynard discarded his wet-look vinyl jacket and opened his locker next to Stony's. "We late, man, we only got time fo' some quick tokes." He removed a white Baggie from his locker.