“And then, ladies and gentlemen, there’s the Third Tier. Third Tierers consist of human beings who have nuts and bolts embedded everywhere in their pain-wracked bodies, and if they don’t, they should have. Their bones ache all night long, no matter what position they get themselves into. They’ve all had one major operation (at least) and more than one life-threatening disease, not counting the one that’s at present roaming around their soon-to-be-forgotten remains. The people in the Third Tier have seen several tragedies in their lifetime, are rarely lucky in love, and if they’re still married to their second or third wife they’ve both forgotten when they stopped liking each other and when their hatred and indifference began. These people will slowly meet their maker in some hospital bed with only an apathetic nurse by their bedside. Maybe the ex-wife or ex-husband, but that’s unlikely. The nurse will be waiting impatiently to pull the sheet over the Third Tier corpse’s face so she can get to the local bar and meet some tattooed bohunk who will mess up her head as sure as she’s a woman. If they’re not in the hospital, then Third Tier folks will collapse on the floor of their apartment. They’ll try desperately to crawl to the last thing they will ever see, the telephone they will never reach. Third Tier people will lose their balance putting on their boxer shorts or Big Whites in the bathroom, crack their skulls on the marble floor, and lie there looking at the ceiling until it disappears from view.

“I’m in the Third Tier, my friends. I’ll end up having a series of strokes in a wheelchair in New York City on the corner of Sixty-third and Lexington Avenue like a lot of Third Tierers do. I will have been sunning myself and then suddenly I’ll be spazzing around in my damn wheelchair and there’s my fat-assed nurse whose name is Ysabel or Beatriz or something like that, who’s wearing a white starched uniform that was given to her by the employment agency strictly for show, being that she’s about as much a nurse as I am a rock star. I won’t be able to afford to hire Ynes or Concertina but I will anyway because I’ll be dead before I have to pay her agency.

“So there I am spazzing out on the sidewalk and Carlotta or Damaris, whatever the hell her name is, isn’t paying any attention to me. She won’t even notice when I fall out of my wheelchair and flop around on the pavement like a hooked mackerel. Carlotta or Damaris or whatever the hell her name is won’t notice because the sight of me revolts her. She’ll purposely be looking elsewhere.