So he works his way along, tracking like a maniac to sit through one glacial transaction after another. It’s a bit of an effort, when he’s tired or depressed, living up to the task of being Sandy Chapman; he’s expected to show up at a friend/client’s house and galvanize the day, burst in with manic energy and his crazy man’s grin, discuss all the latest developments in music, movies, sports, whatever, shifting registers from full-blown culturevulturehood to astonishing mallworld ignorance … pull out yet another eye-dropper, of Affability or Funny Bone or California Mello or the Buzz, whatever seems to be called for at the moment, eyes bugging out with manic glee as he holds up the dropper and pulls his face under it.… He’s used to operating rationally under the weight of monumental highs; in fact it’s just everyday reality for him, stonedness, it’s a handicap he barely notices anymore. His tolerance level is so high that he only really notices the effect of that first drip of Apprehension of Beauty at the beginning of each day. So he lids with whatever household he has reoriented to party mode, smokes dope with them, inhales capsules of snapper, giggles at them as they exhibit the first signs of brain damage, fills them full of that comic spirit that is surely the main thing he is selling. It’s quite a performance, though he seldom feels it as such. Method acting.

Long after sundown he finishes making his last delivery, some five hours late. On the way home he stops and buys the ten-trillionth Big Mac fries and a Coke, eats while tracking home. Reaches home, but it’s no rest for the weary; the party there is in dormant mode and reflexively he sparkplugs it, gets it ontrack and rolling. Then into his bedroom, to check on phone messages.

The answering machine can barely hold all the messages that have been left, and Sandy sits on the bed buzzing like a vibrator, watching the surfing on the wall screens and listening to them. One catches his wandering attention and he repeats it from the start:

“Hey, Sandy. Tompkins here. We’re having a small party tonight at my place and we’d like to see you, if you can make it. We want to introduce you to a friend from Hawaii who has a proposal, too. It’ll go late so don’t worry about when you arrive. Hope this reaches you in time—later—”

Sandy goes out to the game room. Jim is absorbed in the hanging video screens, and Sandy checks them out. Collage city. “What’s on, Jim Dandy?”

Jim gestures at one flickering black-and-white square. “Best Hamlet ever filmed. Christopher Plummer as the Dane, shot by the BBC at Elsinore years ago.”

“I like the old Russian one, myself. His father’s ghost, ten stories tall—how could you beat it?”