“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

It’s Ronald Reagan. It just slipped out.

Pinkwater, knowing perfectly well who you are (or were), stops her spreading. She picks a congealed strawberry off her bagel, flicks it into the sink, and for some reason, you have no idea why, begins talking about her abortion in college. How she does not regret it. How it’s one of the easiest procedures in the world actually, and Pinkwater has had monthly periods that were harder than her abortion, she says, and if you want to talk big government, how much bigger, how much more invasive and controlling can government get when it’s allowed to patrol a freaking uterus? A safe abortion is a basic right, she says, required for the full emancipation of women, and guys like you, Alex Wilson, have ridden high on the backs of women’s rights for too long, too long, she says, prompting the other women to nod their heads deeply. They chime in like, Pinkwater, we’ve all had abortions, and they all start in about their abortions.

“I was out in three minutes,” one says, and as they get into it, the women are so matter-of-fact that they scare you.

You glance around the room in a slight panic. Like something is going on, something is happening that you do not understand, because despite all that has happened to you, you still have not evolved, perhaps will never evolve—

Yet there is hope for you.

Because certain late nights, you have noticed, your apartment in Silver Spring is accompanied by certain strange noises. It’s like someone outside is walking the grounds around your apartment building before pausing, for a moment, in front of your window, and despite the fact that you are on the ground floor and keep the blinds closed when you watch TV, you can, like, totally discern the snap-shuck of a Zippo.

You can, from within the confines of your living room, smell the burn of the cigarette, hear its little crisping fire followed by the deep, warm sigh of a man leaning his back against the Maryland brick, smoking, and Greg Tampico, he always used Zippos, he always sighed like that after the first drag, and while you understand intellectually that it cannot be Tampico, there’s just no way that it’s Tampico, the figure who has begun appearing outside your window late at night, smoking, strikes your imagination in such a way that it frightens you—your dreams, you’re unaccustomed to using them—and on those nights, it feels as though Tampico’s really there, with you even though he’s not with you, and so this ghost is, like, a starting point, now room has been made, there is now a place within you where your imagination can take root and maybe grip you, maybe grow—and the Herero, the Namibians sporting the skins of their oppressor, they too are on your mind as you sit here in the break room of the Jefferson Building listening to Pinkwater, staring helplessly at the colorful rack of lightweight ladies’ sweaters, the Costco mini fridge and microwave matching set, the coffee mugs that have been washed and carefully dried that say things like DANCE LIKE NOBODY’S WATCHING or EVERYTHING WHALE BE ALRIGHT (with a picture of a whale on it), or WOMEN’S PAIN IS NOT NECESSARY FOR MEN’S SELF-DISCOVERY, or the chintzy-ass poster of Thomas Jefferson on the wall above the sink and the quote beneath it—ACTION WILL DELINEATE AND DEFINE YOU—until you meet eyes with the only other man there on break.