DeWitt is sitting out in a lawn chair on his sagging gray wooden porch. His arms are crossed, his eyes narrowed, his foot tapping. He chides me all the way into his apartment, down the hall, and into his bedroom, the place where I change his dressing. “What’s your problem, anyway?” he says. “You don’t need to be no Norman Einstein to figure out how to get here on time. You been here ’bout fifteen thousand times. ’Bout thirty thousand! You ought to know by now. You say you’re going to be here at twelve, you best be here at twelve. Maybe you mean twelve midnight, you want to come here at twelve midnight?”

“Norman Einstein?” I say, lowering my bag to the floor, digging around for supplies. I cover the syringes with the blood pressure cuff; I keep forgetting I’m not supposed to bring syringes into DeWitt’s apartment.

“Allen, I mean.”

“What?”

“Allen Einstein, okay?” He climbs onto his bed, rearranges his pillows, sucks at his top lip with his bottom one.

“Albert,” I say. “His name was Albert Einstein.”

“Whatever. Now you just showin’ off.”

“Would you please lie flat so I can do your dressing?”

“Yeah,” he says. “After you wait for me. I got a life, too. I’m a bidness man, work twenty-four hours a day.”

This is actually true—DeWitt does a fair amount of drug dealing. “I got one important call to make,” he says. “And I got to call right now, take just a minute. Then you can do my dressing.” He stares defiantly at me.

I sigh, stare back. It won’t do any good to tell DeWitt that all three patients before him took longer than usual today. As far as DeWitt is concerned, there are no other patients. It won’t do any good to tell him he’s wasting my time just for spite. That’s the plan, after all.

“Well?” he says, finally.

“What, DeWitt.”

“I could use some privacy.” He picks up the glossy flyer he got last week from the Mercedes dealer. He has a substantial amount of money coming from a settlement, something about what happened when he went to court over his gunshot wound. He turns pointedly away from me, starts punching in numbers.

I go out into the living room, sit in his oversized black leather chair. I notice the faint smell of his citrusy cologne. He has one chair, one sofa, one lamp, one television. No rug. No pictures on the wall. No curtains. Nothing to read. It’s a terrible waiting room.