Giddy with heartbreak, barefoot, attired in a hospital gown that is prone to flapping open, my head wrapped in blood-stained gauze, and reduced to a deranged limp, I despair of getting a cab. But I do. On the first corner. At first it looks like bad news—“Hey psychokiller,” he calls out, “hey shooter, get in”— but when he asks for an autograph made out to his daughter I realize he thinks I’m that actor. With a grandiose, ringleader gesture he informs me that it will be his pleasure to chauffeur me anywhere I like.

“You do any grisly murders lately?” he says. “You shoot anyone? Eh, killer?”

I make a whimpering noise and bang my head against the window in remorse.

“That’s amazing,” he says. “God, I love it. You guys never turn it off, do you?”

Outside my apartment there is a homeless guy squatting in his cart, shrieking at an imaginary friend on an imaginary cell phone. All he’s got are ghost friends. Poltergeist lovers. Take away the outfit, the besmirchment, and the poor dental hygiene, I think, and that’s me.

Inside the apartment I don’t feel much better. Someone has redecorated in the style of late Visigoth. The fridge has disgorged its contents onto the floor, the sofa and mattress and Pinkerton’s doggy bed have all been disemboweled, my books are shucked of their jackets and scattered about like victims of genocide. In short, everything that is breakable or cleavable or pierceable has been broken and cleaved and pierced. Even Charlie’s bra has been lacerated.

I wade through what was once my life. When I tread on something crunchy I look down and see that I have stomped on Chester Wellington III and his bride. I do not feel colossal, however. I feel like the Ür-dupe. I let Chester get to me for no reason. With merciless clarity, with exquisite shame, I see now just how precious and moronic my proposal was. “That is the sound of our future together.” If it seemed possibly sentimental before, it now makes me cringe with shame.

And it was all for nothing. There never was going to be any future.

The odd thing about the ransacking is that all my valuables, quote unquote, are still present. Nothing is missing. This might make the point of the destruction ambiguous, but an enormous graffito on the wall makes the message of the violence, and the identity of its author, irrefutable: in black spray-painted numbers above the sofa is the disheartening, nearly incredible six-figure amount of money that I still owe Deke.65

Weird, I think. I still have like two weeks before payday.

What’s his beef?