Freddy took a quick hit off his cigarette. “Well, imagine,” he said. “From Douala, in Cameroon, to Kinshasa, to Dar, to the Africa House in Zanzibar—party, party for a couple of days—and then on to Paris, customs at L.A., blah blah, and then here. Until the water bed in the guest bedroom last night, the last time I was in between sheets and really slept was at the Hotel Akwa on the Boulevard de la Liberté in fucking Douala—the armpit of Africa. That was just before the latest round with this fucking malaria. None of it was too bad, until I hit that airline strike in Los Angeles. I was supposed to be in business class, but they somehow had me in the last seat in the tail section—one of those seats that don’t tilt back. You can take that shit when you’re young, but I was having my—you know, my epileptic twitches, and I’m back there going off like a machine gun, rat-a-tat-tat, and in the meantime the steward is dishing shit out to everybody, like we’re in prison and he’s the yard boss. I got into it with him. I just let him have it, that’s all. Zona, is there any more coffee?”

“How many cups have you had already?” Zona said. She had fixed her hair in a ponytail and had thrown on a cotton sundress.

“Just two.”

Zona looked to her father-in-law. “All he does is sit there, drink coffee, and smoke strong cigarettes. He won’t eat. I didn’t think doctors smoked anymore.”

“Who said doctors had good sense?” Freddy said. “Doctors can be the craziest sumbitches in the world. Behind the bulwark of authority, self-assurance, and the seemingly judicious intelligence of the white coat, too often unrighteousness, lunacy, and sheer incompetence sit at the helm. Thus it is in medicine as in all walks of life; in medicine, more so. Drug addicts, suicides, desperate people. I mean, I publish in the journals. I have a certain renown. So you see what the world’s coming to.” Freddy presented Zona with the empty mug. “Please. More. I’ve got jet lag and a real bad case of the poontang blues.”

Zona went into the kitchen, and Blaine leaned forward and whispered, “You get much pussy over there—you know, in Africa?”

“Yeah, sure,” Freddy said nervously. “A little. Some one-night stands with the ever-circulating network of aid workers. Some of the hard cases will go to the ground and marry natives. A lot of the Catholics sublimate. I can do that, too. I can sublimate.”

“You mean you just don’t do it?” Blaine said.

“Well, it’s pretty risky. AIDS is everywhere. It used to be bad just in the big cities, but now it’s all over. It puts the fear of God into you.”

Zona returned with a coffee tray. “Tell Willy how you lost your shoe.”