“Yes. To get the nerve up. Ever since I committed to the idea, a curious sense of calm has descended on me and I have felt somethin’ like happiness for over a week or more, but now, however, the stark reality of the act has me alive with fear. If I take your meanin’, you on the same path over some damn man. That’s foolishness, abominable folly. I would not have announced my intentions. I was going to tell you I was headed for Chile but you let the cat out of the bag. I will not dissuade ya.”

“It’s too bad about the refrigerator. No one’s going to use…it’s not Carl. It’s—”

“It’s just a whole string of Carl, ain’t it, darlin’?” He lit yet another cigarette. She could hear ice cubes rattling in a glass. Bobby said, “I can’t hear you, darlin’.”

Another wave swept over her, leaving her calm, unafraid. It seemed like a long time had passed. An eon. She weighed ten thousand pounds. “Are you on the nod?” she said.

“Shot some scag. Mozart…” he said. “You paralyze the high cerebral processes and mortality ain’t such a biggie. No! Let me rephrase that: You paralyze the alligator brain and the higher cerebral processes engage in an ultimate clarity and then you can overcome the will to live which is seated right they-ah at the base of ya skull; you see the thing in itself in its true colors. Nay! Indeed, you feel it in the very core of your bein’. Forgive me, my thinkin’ is gettin’ sloppy. It’s all very simple. You anesthetize and the decision to live or die ain’t a whole lot harder than choosin’ between chocolate ice cream and butter pecan. I have been practicin’, but I must confess, I’m a trifle shaky whenevah I try shovin’ the barrel of this nine-millimeter in my mouth. Th’ taste of gun solvent an’ cold blue steel is rather vile. I wonder how those fellas in the classical literature and the history books could fall on they-ah swords without the benefit of narcotic. Was they valiant? Why, I hardly does think so.”

There was another long pause. She punched the stereo remote a dozen times. It was becoming too much of an effort to speak. The CD changer clicked and suddenly the Moody Blues were doing “Nights in White Satin.” A very long time before it had been their song. Now he was back into the Doors and what did she have beyond The Best of the Doors? And how could she possibly find it in this kind of fucked-up condition? Or get to it? Even now she was still doing her whole ineradicable thing, running her game: trying to please someone other than herself. She let the phone drop next to a stereo speaker. Bobby was Wally the Walrus again.