He turns, pauses, standing in the bathroom as in a box of light, and then sticks his hand into the pillowcase, lets it drop—the gun’s in his hand.

He puts the barrel in his mouth, first removing his unlit cigarette. Pause. He puts the smoke in his mouth and tries putting the gun in his ear. Pause. He closes his eyes. Pause. He reaches in his pants pocket, takes out a lighter, fires up his Kool. Opens his eyes. Lowers the gun from his head.

He jams the pistol in the pillowcase, drops it out the window with a shudder.

Coming back toward the bed, he finds his Hawaiian-style shirt draped on a chair. He dons the shirt, finding two bullet holes in the area of the waistline. He lines them up—an entrance and an exit—threading his finger through both and wiggling it, astonished.

Checking his own abdomen, he finds a burn mark in the corresponding area along his ribs.

Heads over to the room’s window, opens the curtains. Freezes, looking at some objects on the sill. Picks one up—a small plastic-wrapped packet. Tears a hole in it, tastes some of the contents on the tip of his tongue.

He whips back and forth a couple times, then grabs half a dozen of the packets (there are nine in a row on the sill, if we could make them out) and rushes to the john and starts tearing them open and flushing them.

But the toilet dogs. He hunts deliriously—

CASS: Plunger! PLUNGER!

—nothing. He starts jamming the packets down the toilet with his hand—we’re mostly looking at his rear end throughout this operation and listening to his frenzied moans and incoherent exclamations.

He rushes back to the bedroom window, picks up the last three packets in both his hands. He holds them against his chest.

MAN’S VOICE: Hey.

A hand bangs on the screen and CASS spasms, the three packets go flying. He tries to gather them together surreptitiously with a toe while talking to the man outside his window:

MAN: Checkout is twelve noon, dude.

CASS: Fine.

MAN: You got that?

CASS: I’m on it! It’s a lock! That’s what “fine” means!

MAN: Do you know what time it is now?

CASS: I do know, yeah. What about it?

MAN: Then tell me.

CASS: No.

MAN: It’s eleven-forty. Do you even know what day it is?

CASS: It’s today all day. What about it?

MAN: If you know, then why don’t you tell me?

CASS: Because I don’t go walking up to people who I don’t even know who they’re supposed to be and start telling them completely obvious stuff, man.

MAN: Come on, impress me: What day is it?

CASS: Who are you?

MAN: Somebody you won’t even give the time of day.

CASS: It’s eleven-forty!

He shuts the window. Draws the curtains fast.

He’s terribly shaken. Confused, terrified, without a clue.

He leaps to the phone and yanks up the receiver as if it were ringing, but it’s not. He takes two breaths, hits some buttons. Intones his name slowly for a collect call: