“Ralph, I am not just wearing this guy’s shoes.”

“He was definitely ‘obscure,’ your man. There’s no way I’m going to let them give you shoddy goods. Anyway, it’s impossible, at the moment, to just go and kill someone for their body. Their family, the police, the press, everyone’s going to be looking for them. The body has to be ‘cleared,’ and then it has to be prepared for new use by a doctor who knows what he is doing. It’s a long and complicated process. You can’t just plug your brain into any skull, thank Christ. Imagine what a freak show we’d have then.”

“If he’s been ‘cleared,’ I think that at least you should tell me what you know,” I said. “I presume he was homosexual.”

“Why else would he be in such good shape? Most hets, apart from actors, have the bodies of corpses. You object to homosexuality?”

“Not in principle, and not yet. I haven’t had time to take it in. I’m at the beginning here. I need to know what all this might mean.”

Ralph said, “As far as I know, he was nutty but not druggy. A suicide, I think, by carbon monoxide poisoning. They had to fix up his lungs. I looked into it for you, Adam—Leo, I mean. I asked them to give you the best. Some of those women were in great shape.”

“I told you, I’m not ready to be a woman. I’m not even used to being a man.”

“That was your choice, then. Your man had something like clinical depression. Obviously a lot of young people suffer from it. They can’t get the help they need. Even in the long run they don’t come round. Antidepressants, therapy, all that, it never works. They’re never going to be doers and getters like us, man. Better to be rid of them altogether and let the healthy ones live.”

“Live in the bodies of the discarded, you mean? The neglected, the failures?”

“Right.”

“I see what you’re getting at. ‘Mark’ might have suffered in his mind. He might not have lived a ‘successful’ life, but his friends seemed to like him. His mother would like to see him.”

“What are you saying?”

“What if I—”

“Don’t think about pulling that kind of stunt in front of his mother,” he said. “She’d go mad if you walked in there with that face on. His whole family! They’d think they’d seen a fucking ghost!”

“I’m not about to do that,” I said. “I don’t know where she lives. That’s not quite what I mean.”

Ralph said, “My guy was struck by lightning while lying drunk under a tree. Nothing unusual about my man, thank Christ, though I keep away from AA meetings.”