I go to look at the furniture in my living room, my artwork: the print of a barefoot woman clad in a thin white dress sitting outside in the moonlight and playing her flute. An abstract oil I’d splurged on. The books I’ve bought, so many of which are still unread. I sit on the sofa, thinking. And then I remember that I never paid DeWitt. I never gave him any money for those drugs. I go into my office to call him.

“How come you ain’t dead?” he asks.

“I just realized I didn’t pay you for what you gave me. I’d like to send you a check.”

“You want to pay me.”

“Yes.”

“Why, you putting your affairs in order?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. So how much, DeWitt?”

“How much? I tell you what, I’ll charge you the same thing I charged Chip: nothing. Be my tax-deductible charitable contribution. And now let’s cut the bullshit. You didn’t call me ’bout no payment. You called ’cause you want me to tell you it’s fine what you doing. Say oh, good-bye Myra, boo hoo, don’t worry, you doing the right thing. But what you doing is wrong, and you know it the same as me. You just a coward, using Chip as an excuse to back out of what you never got in.”

Upstairs, I hear the bathroom door opening. I lower my voice to say, “I have to go. But I just want to say one thing, DeWitt. You don’t know anything about my life.”

“I know plenty ’bout your life! Any fool that meets you can see plenty ’bout your life. Onliest one can’t see, be your own sorry self!”

“Well, I’ll tell you something. I think you’re the one who’s a coward, staying in a life so full of despair that you have to numb yourself to it every day!”

“Man, you get stupider and stupider every time I talk to you. We all on drugs, baby. Just choose different kinds, is all. Some folks sit in churches with they butts clamped tight. Some spend their whole lives buying shit. But don’t you doubt it for a minute, girl, we is all of us in the bidness of numbing ourselves. Now I got a real good idea. Why don’t I hang up and save us both more grief?”

“DeWitt,” I say. But he is gone.

I hear Chip coming down the stairs and I hang up the phone, go into the living room, flop down on the sofa. “Who were you talking to?” he asks.

“Oh, one of those salesmen. I hate when they call.”

“Selling what?”

“Aluminum siding.”

“Really.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

“Oh, really? You must have been running water. He was so hard to get rid of!”