I put the mice on a variety of diets and subjected them to various stresses. I kept a control group and fed its members the same mouse chow I fed Al. Other mice—eating a diet similar to my own, drinking a proportionate amount of coffee, and keeping the same hours—were dead in five weeks. Challenge, a momentary adaptation to stress, then exhaustion and death. I accepted the results with equanimity. I knew what was in the cards for me; once again I had evidence. Maybe I was lucky to have been canned. What I needed now was a plan: I wasn’t going to be a victim anymore.

At 3 A.M. I took off my white lab coat, washed my hands, and called up my ex-boss. Brrringgg! Ding-a-ling! Brrringgg! When he answered, I hung up! Ah, ha, ha, shit! I then had a snack and about twenty minutes later—just when he’d fallen back to sleep—I called again. Ha, ha, ha, fuck! I pictured him lying there seething.

I put another batch of mice on a regime mimicking my old schedule, but I fortified their diets with vitamins. They died in just under five weeks, confirming something I always suspected: vitamins, especially the kind that have a strong smell, not only make you feel bad but can hasten your demise! The result held even for the mice that had the antioxidant cocktail: flavonoids, soy, red-wine extract, beta carotene, etc.

To some mice I gave huge amounts of coffee. Coffee mice became very aggressive and would often bite me. For each attempted bite, it was no coffee and three days in a punishment can. It skewed the validity of the experiments, but I already suspected the ultimate outcome. They say coffee is pretty much harmless, but after studying a coffee mouse’s brain at autopsy I calculated otherwise. Shrunken thymus glands, a swelling in the cranial cavity, and a shriveling of the adrenal glands. They could run the most complicated labyrinths I constructed, but they were burning it at both ends.

One night I called my ex-boss and he fucking made me. He said he got caller I.D. and knew it was me on the line. He threatened to turn me in to the police. I didn’t say boo, man. I just hung up. I worried until dawn. I could hear my heart thumping in my chest. Was what I’d done a jailable offense? So much for the job recommendation.