‘You’ll be great,’ said Ranch. They paused to take the coke. When Larry had given the mirror to Rosinne, Ranch put a finger to his lips, winked, and said quietly: ‘C’mon, I’m gonna show you something. Put your mind at ease.’

For the second time that day Larry followed Ranch into a bathroom. This one had bulbs around the mirror. Unflushed pee glittered in the toilet bowl, and the air smelt of patchouli oil and smoke. Ranch turned to the wall-mounted medicine cabinet behind the door, opened it, and took from among the array of vitamins and painkillers, a small carved wooden box of the kind you could buy in any Chinatown.

‘My little box of tricks,’ he said, unhooking the catch to show two compartments containing small coloured capsules, a dozen or so on one side, perhaps half as many on the other.

‘Sex and death,’ he added, cheerfully. But his face, as he gazed into the box, was no longer boyish. There was a haze of fatigue, like a sediment suspended in his skin, suggesting to Larry for the first time what it cost Ranch to go on being Ranch.

‘Wow,’ said Larry, looking at the capsules. ‘Which is which? They look the same.’

‘Now that would be too crazy,’ said Ranch. ‘These ones with the red at the bottom and blue at the top will give you a hard-on you could swing a piano from. And these little critters with the blue at the bottom, they put the lights out. I mean, for ever. Kaput. Hasta nunca. Leaves no trace in the body. Nothing anyone could find.’

‘You’re kidding,’ said Larry. ‘That’s bullshit.’ He found himself laughing, a little drunkenly.

Ranch shook his head. ‘More things in heaven and earth, Larry, than you ever fuckin’ dreamed of. I got them from a doctor in Vegas who wanted to do some voodoo with a girl I was seeing. You know what doctors are like.’

‘Have you tried one?’ asked Larry. ‘I mean one of the sex ones.’

‘Never needed to,’ said Ranch. ‘It’s just nice to know they’re here. Insurance.’

‘They could be anything,’ said Larry. He wanted to touch them.

‘Could be.’ Ranch closed the box and put it back in the cabinet. ‘Maybe I should throw them out before some chick takes one for period pain. The thing is, I like the idea of them. You know what I mean?’

Larry nodded. He knew.

‘Hey, you’ll be great,’ said Ranch, putting an arm around Larry’s shoulders and gently leading him back into the bedroom. ‘You’ll be beautiful.’

13