APRIL 2. HOMER, my UPS guy, drops off three cartons of Medco pharmaceuticals. Homer is an okay guy if you steer him clear of religion and all talk of hell, but I slipped up today and got him going. “Hell?” he says. “You’re looking at bad shit before your feet hit the ground, before you even get there. Man, they got these close-quarter holding cells at the farthest edge of the earth, little concrete anterooms where they soften up the condemned before transit. Bones are crushed. Sinners are pounded, gassed, drawn, quartered, lashed up and down. Then you’re deloused with carbolic acid, and all the while they play Grateful Dead albums. Have you ever really listened to a Grateful Dead album? Actually listened? It’s only the beginning! Charon, a terrifying monster in his own right, proceeds to ferry the doomed across the river Styx. Weeping and wailing like a pack of howling wolves. Begging forgiveness, gnashing teeth. Are you with me?” he says with a celestial fire in his eyes. “I don’t think so, Thomas. I don’t think you’re paying close attention, but you should because it gets much worse. Up here hedonists like yourself frolic and sin as they have for centuries, pushovers for Satan and his lies! Hell is no cartoon; it’s a real place. Cross the river, baby, and you got H-E-double-hockey-sticks for all of time. Abandon hope all ye who enter! First thing, they roast you on a spit while Satan reads you the rules and regulations. He’s a fast talker with that split tongue, but still, it takes nine days to complete the job, and all this time you’re roasting on a skewer. Once the grave implications of your situation sink in demons cool you off with liquid nitrogen and send you out to mop and wax a football field, side by side with the likes of Joseph Stalin and Ivan the Terrible. When that’s done, thirty centuries later, you get five minutes to write a sixty-page term paper with a pencil nub or a melting beige Crayola crayon before some other hideous torment.” Along with my pharmaceutical boxes, Homer picks up a smaller package from his hand truck. He looks at it and shakes his head in dismay. “Thomas, you are still getting packages from Playboy magazine. Why do I stand here wasting my breath?” Homer glances at his watch. Thank God he’s running behind. He hops back in his brown truck and peels rubber out of my driveway. I carry three boxes of drugs to my little pharmacy just off the kitchen and begin to restock the shelves. Okay, what have we got here?