“Nah, Mel’s not really much of a partyer. If I want a bender, I go out with the boys. You know how it is.”

“No. I don’t know. I don’t have anything remotely resembling ‘the boys’ at home.”

“No?”

“Not for a long time, anyway. You ever see my clone going out with any boys after work?”

“Well, you’re keeping up with me just fine, for an old fart.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t always this way, you know. I logged some epic nights, back in the day.”

He recounted for Brent a story from the summer he’d graduated high school.

“A group of us had depleted our beers but we weren’t ready to call it a night,” he said. “We were all pretty obviously underage but there was one guy who sometimes had some luck with a fake ID. Unfortunately, he was, at the moment, completely passed out on the couch. Absolutely comatose.”

“What’d you do?”

“Well, the first thing we did was grab a green magic marker and we drew a handlebar mustache on his face,” Jeremiah said. “Then we woke him up and sent him to the package store to buy a six-pack.”

Brent laughed so hard he nearly fell off the couch.

“We watched the whole thing through the window,” Jeremiah said, laughing so hard at the memory he could barely get the words out. “And when he came out, he couldn’t understand why the clerk was so quick to tell him to fuck off. It was hilarious!”

“And you never see those guys anymore?” Brent asked.

“Not in years. We didn’t keep in touch. I haven’t even thought about them, to tell you the truth. That’s pathetic, isn’t it?”

“It kind of is.”

“I don’t think I have one single friend,” Jeremiah said after a moment. “Not one actual fucking real friend.”

“That’s really pathetic,” Brent told him.

“Well, maybe I do have one friend.”

“If you say it’s me,” Brent said, “I think I might cry or something.”

“No, not you. Louie. That dog is my best friend.”

Brent laughed. “I hate to break it to you, pal, but that dog hates you.”

“No,” Jeremiah told him. “That dog loves me.” He wanted to reiterate that it was the clone Louie hated, not him. But somehow he had the wits, even in his drunken head, to stop talking about it in front of the camera.

“You know, Jeremiah,” Brent said finally, “I am your friend.”

Jeremiah opened his eyes to gauge Brent’s expression, but he was still leaning back with his eyes closed, so he couldn’t tell if Brent was being serious.

“Yeah, well, I was kind of forced on you. You didn’t have much choice in the matter. If you met me before, I would have been that uptight asshole we watch on the monitor every day. I would have been the clone. You’d have hated me. God, he makes me hate me.”

“You’re probably right,” Brent said. “Sometimes I almost forget you’re the same person. What the hell happened to make you like that?”