Eventually his dusty and sweating form reels into the parking lot of a CVS. Inside Kierk grabs a bottle of hydrogen peroxide off the shelf which he uses to douse his bleeding forehead and then stands bent over swearing in the aisle when some of it gets in his eye. A young clerk is paused a bit away, one hand out, eyebrows raised.

“Wait, you’re gonna need to buy that first.” Then he sees the blood. “Whoa, are you okay, man?”

Kierk, standing in the aisle, stinking of smoke, blinded, holding his hands to his face while the hydrogen peroxide leaks between his fingers and makes small fizzling bubbles on the white tile, smiles, and responds—“As well as Saint Paul on the road to Damascus.”

“What?”

“Do you know the Caravaggio? The second one of course. He didn’t really get cooking until the second one. Next time you’re in Rome, please, treat yourself and go see it. Paul’s revelation is reified in the viewer. It’s in the basilica off the Piazza del Popolo. Ack! This stings.”

“Listen, if you don’t leave I’m going to have to call the cops.”

“I’m, um, being forced to reconsider my life choices here, so of course you will. But before you do: where is the nearest payphone?”

The clerk, after directing him to a payphone down the street, watches mutely as Kierk leaves clutching the brown bottle and a package of bandages without paying. Kierk walks up the street listening to the babbles and fizzes above his eye, trying to wipe away some of the blood on his cheek and spitting black globules on the sidewalk.