Nothing worked. The cramps finally disappeared on their own. But they didn’t leave for long. Two nights later they were back.

The doctor listened to my description with some interest. “Cramps?”

“Yes.”

“In the legs?”

“The inside of the thigh to be exact,” I said, showing her the spot.

“And you tried standing to relieve the cramp.”

“Tried stretching as well.”

“Have you injured the leg recently?”

“No.”

“Well,” she said finally, “it could be a potassium deficiency.”

“Potassium?”

“Do you eat bananas?”

“All the time.”

“Okay, then it’s probably not that.”

The cramps generally occurred in the middle of the night, but one morning I was sitting on the edge of the bed, one leg crossed over the other, putting on a sock.

Mimi came in from the bathroom on the fly, a toothbrush in her hand. “Cramp?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s not bananas.”

My doctor sent me to a specialist who made me write down everything I ate of a typical day. There was a series of blood tests that bled me dry, and a fun session with electrodes and voltage.

“Curious case,” the specialist told me.

I tried not to hold the electroshock treatment against him. “So you don’t know what’s causing the cramping?”

He smiled and shook his head. “No idea.”

SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE, and my initial scream brings the server to our table.

“The pizza,” she asks, “it is bad?”

“No,” Mimi tells her. “My partner is just having a bad cramp.”

“Cramp?”

“In his leg. He gets them every so often.”

I’m gripping the table as hard as I can and trying to move into a position where I can brace the leg against something substantial.

Our server is a tall woman, broad at the shoulders and the hips. Blue eyes, a small mouth that gives her the appearance of a large fish. I can see that she is concerned.

“He should eat more pizza,” she says. “This is much salt in pizza.”

I block my foot against the leg of the table and try to press the cramp out of existence.

“You hear that, Bird,” says Mimi. “More salt.”

WHEN POTASSIUM DEFICIENCY was ruled out, salt was the next item on the Hippocratic checklist. Low sodium and dehydration, I was told, could cause cramping in athletes. I wasn’t an athlete, but at the time, it had pleased me to think that I might share a medical condition with the likes of Alex Morgan and Kawhi Leonard.

The doctor suggested I try a sports drink. “A lot of football and basketball players drink them,” he told me. “They’re designed to replenish the fluids and electrolytes that you lose through sweating.”

I tried to remember the last time I had sweated, but I picked up a bottle on the off chance that it might work. I don’t remember the brand, just the colour of the drink.

Iridescent orange.