“Knock it off with that crap,” Mrs. Billis said. “Get your ass out of bed, get a job, and go out and find yourself some cute girl! You are your own worst enemy, and mine, too! Lying in bed isn’t going to solve anything. Look at me, I’ve got cancer and I’m not crying the blues. I’m seventy-three and I still get up and work like a dog!”

Matthew felt he might weep. Surely he was having a nervous breakdown. He said, “Why do you always have to come busting in here with tough guy tactics when I’m ready for shock treatments? Do you time my cycles and plan on coming at the worst possible moment? You don’t know what hell looking for work can be. Capitalism is the worst evil ever devised by man. Hustle, hustle, hustle until you can’t go on. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t hack it out there in middle-management hell. If you only knew how heartless those bastards are now. In your day people were still human. I’m telling you, it’s criminal and no one will stop them!”

Margo Billis barked off several shallow coughs. Her relationship with her son had come down to little more than late-night arguments. Mornings, daylight hours weren’t so bad, but the nights were killers. When she could no longer control the anxiety over her impending fate, she would burst into his room on any pretext. “Be glad you aren’t living in a car,” she said. “Be glad you aren’t trying to cut it in North Korea with beriberi and a tablespoon of rice per day.”

Matthew’s throat was aflame. He pitched his voice higher to work an unused portion of his larynx and Margo recoiled. He sounded perversely like Mickey Mouse. Helium-voiced, this cartoon son tossed out his hand and said, “Depression is worse than any painful disease—cancer, starvation—whatever you got—anything. I’ve seen more than a hundred shrinks. I’ve taken every antidepressant under the sun. Engineering is all wrong for me. I need another venue to express my peculiar point of view. I mean if I have a contribution to make to the world, I need to go another road.” Matthew was proud of his vocabulary choice but when he saw that it failed to impress his mother, his thin neck finally gave out and his heavy round head fell back on the Slumber King. His voice was piercing. “I can’t take any further interrogation. What you are doing to me is against Geneva Convention rules.” He folded a king-size pillow around his head and then stretched into the full layout position and executed a body roll-and-a-half toward the east wall. In one adroit, well-polished move he not only escaped the sharp light from the hallway, he also muffled the harsh gravel rasp of his mother’s incessant nagging.