Lee handed the flask to the black man, who quickly put it to his mouth and tilted it upward. Suddenly his eyes opened wide and he spat and gagged.

“Goddamned honkie sonofabitch! What kind of shit you pullin’ on me?” He kept puckering his mouth, making odd movements with his lips, trying to wipe the taste off with his sleeve.

He grabbed the flask by the neck, brought it down sharply against the desk, shattering the bottom of it, splattering the liquid all over Lee’s hospital greens. Then he brandished the jagged edge. “I gonna cut you up, honkie!”

Lee backed toward the door. “Ragen,” he whispered. “Hey, Ragen.”

Lee, feeling terror build, expected Ragen to come to his defense. But no one came. He dashed out the door and down the hall, with the black man in pursuit.

Ragen started to take the spot, but Arthur said, “Lee must be taught a lesson.”

“I cannot let him be cut,” Ragen said.

“If he’s not taught proper restraint,” Arthur said, “he might be a greater danger in the future.”

Ragen accepted the suggestion and made no move to intervene as Lee ran down the hall, terrified, shouting, “Where the hell are you, Ragen?”

When Ragen felt Lee had had enough and the situation had become too dangerous, he bumped Lee off the spot. As the black man came abreast of a gumey, Ragen stopped and spun the hospital bed directly into his pursuers path. The big man went down with the gumey and fell on the broken flask, cutting his arm.

“Is finish!” Ragen roared.

The black man jumped up, shaking with anger. Ragen grabbed him, threw him into the X-ray room and slammed him against the wall.

"Is over,” Ragen said. "If you do not stop, I destroy you!"

The man’s eyes opened wide at the sudden change. In place of the frightened white boy, he found himself cornered by a nut with a Russian accent and a wild look in his eyes. He was caught in a powerful lock from behind, an arm crushing his neck.

“Ve stop now,” Ragen whispered into his ear. “Is necessary to clean this up.”

“Yeah, man, thats cool, that’s cool …”

Ragen let him go. The black man backed away. “I’m goin’ now, man. No hard feelin’s. Everything’s cool …” He took off, walking fast.

“That,” said Arthur, “was a barbaric way of handling the situation.”

“Vat you vould have done?” Ragen asked.

Arthur shrugged. “If I had your physical capabilities, probably the same thing.”

Ragen nodded.

“What about Lee?” Arthur asked. “It is your decision.”

“He is undesirable.”

“Yes. What good is a person whose whole life is made up of practical jokes? He is a useless android.”

Lee was banished. But rather than live in the limbo of the darkness around the spot, unable to face an existence without practical jokes and comic behavior, he made himself disappear completely.

For a long time, no one laughed.

(3)

Tommy’s letters began to show unpredictable swings of mood. He wrote Marlene, “My knuckles are swollen,” and described a fight he’d had with some inmates who had been stealing his postage stamps. On August 6, he swore he was going to commit suicide. Five days later he wrote her to send him acrylics so he could start painting again.