Angela was still eating peanut butter by the tablespoon. One day I came home and she was lying on her back with four feet in the air, stiff. Heart attack. In just six weeks’ time. I enjoy peanut butter myself. I had been carrying peanut-butter sandwiches in my briefcase as I canvassed the city looking for work. I switched to low-fat turkey. It costs a fortune and, hungerwise, it doesn’t satisfy, but I got to thinking of all the stuff I had eaten in my life, the whole pile of it. In peanut butter alone, there would be a warehouse. Cigarettes? Truck trailers full. After what I’d seen happen to Angela in six weeks, I felt lucky to be alive. I squared my diet away.

I got some Just for Men and colored my hair jet-black. I began to figure that my age was another handicap. But then one of the no-jobs at unemployment asked me if I’d lost my mind. “Anson, you look like Bela Lugosi!” Another said, “Man, that’s a dye job you can spot a mile away.” Some skaters on the street asked me if I was the singer Roy Orbison. Maybe they said this because I was wearing a pair of shades, or maybe they were just dicking with me. I said, “No, man, I’m Junior fuckin’ Walker.”

When I got home and checked myself out in the mirror, I saw that the no-jobs were right about my hair. It was too dark and it made my skin look pale. It was almost green. I looked like an undertaker. Plus, I’d lost weight, and my clothes were too big. Overnight, I had metamorphosed from a Stage One no-job to a Stage Three. Up all night with pain, I finally dropped off and didn’t get up till four in the afternoon. Too late to go out. I didn’t shave. I was thinking, What’s the point of looking? They don’t want to hire you. Capitalism sucks. The big companies just want to get rich. I got to hating everybody.

I drove over to the pet store and bought two dozen mice and a separate wire cage for each. You read stuff in medical reports about how a certain drug or vitamin did something in some study but it will be five years before the general public can get it. Or you read that something has produced miraculous results in chickens but they haven’t tried it on humans yet. I’m the kind that figures, hell, if it works on a chicken it’s going to work on everybody. I mean, if some guy spots mold on bread and turns it into penicillin, why not me? If I can’t get a job, maybe I’ll just go out and win the Nobel Prize.