Only once during this time did I eat a meal: Christmas at my mother’s house. I hardly knew I was there. I noticed nothing, felt fatigued by the dull taste and weight of the food, was harassed by the movement of bodies other than my own.

There were two other interludes when people visited my house, Joe’s house: a man and woman came asking to see the guitars in the workshop. I let them in. They were eating from a large bag of pastries, soft with red filling.

“Won’t you have one?” the man said. I could tell he would have liked it if I had taken one, but I said, “No, thank you.” But they were not through with me.

There was a sheet of paper in Joe’s typewriter, the first page of one of my laborious little tales. It was a sentimental accident. He used the machine for business letters and I had decided to compose a story on it while he was away so that our finger oils would blend in the tiny depression of each key. Normally I did not use a typewriter at all. The woman leaned over the machine and lifted the paper. My hands jerked up, trying to find some prohibition drastic enough to retrieve the page even as she read it. She laughed. I sat down. “Look at this!” she said to the man, and they leaned over the page.

The unaccustomed assault flattened me for the day. As soon as they were gone I crept into bed and slept through the afternoon and night and well into the new morning. The sight of the pristine blue-and-white paper that wrapped the Volcano Bar was the first image I saw that day, and allowed me to plan around it. No need to go out at all that day since the night’s supply was already at hand.

Once, also, Ray came to visit. I met him on the street and he came that night bringing a bag of oranges. He thought I looked ill. There were ten oranges in the bag. It touched me terribly that he should do this. He sat beside me and talked quietly of books. I peeled an orange for him and one for me. We sat in such friendliness that I felt safe and calm enough to eat. No fruit ever tasted better.

For eight days I ate an orange every day just before the Volcano Bar. It lengthened the anticipation, it cut my hunger so that the ritual of the chocolate could be prolonged. I could actually put the bar down beside me after the white filling had been breached and sit, reading, with the luxury of the knowledge that there was still more whenever I stretched out a hand.

My clothes were more baggy than usual, looser. This seemed the natural effect of constant wear. I could see no change in my naked body.