“There was a girl in high school. It was funny. We pretended we didn’t know each other. I never spoke to her in school. It was pretty tricky, too, since we had a lot of classes together. But her bedroom was on the ground floor of her house. I used to climb in her window at night. She laughed when she had an orgasm. I always thought anything else would be a letdown after that.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, there was a girl last year. She was working in a tobacco shop I used to go to. Heidi, her name was. She used to come over sometimes with a pan of lasagna. But nothing ever happened. We’d play records all night and she’d go off in the morning with the empty lasagna pan. After one of those nights she just never came back. I was never wild for lasagna.”

“Does it bother you, not having a girl around? The rest of these freaks are always frothing about it.”

“I get lonely.”

“Yeah, but I mean…”

He dipped a capsule into the dust, took a careful scoop, then capped it.

I tried again. “Rennel says you’re so maladjusted because you have an unsatisfactory sex life.”

I could tell he smiled even with his head bent.

“Do you know who Rennel sleeps with?” I asked.

He smiled up at me. The peyote dust was stuck to the tips of his fingers. “Nobody I know of since Drummer Pillow.” He grinned and continued putting caps on the filled capsules. “Well, I’ll tell you a secret.”

“Okay.”

“Every once in a while, not very often, once every two weeks or so, he fucks Clancy.”

“Agh,” I groaned. “Oh, agh.”

Sam nodded.

“She tells me all about it. Comes up here with her pissy strudel and explains that they have a lot in common because he’s going to be a psychologist, and she’s being analyzed.”

“Agh!”

“Yes. But, you know, he’s very bright. He’s just not very perceptive about people.”

“Dense, you mean.”

“And he comes here late, when she’s already in bed. He doesn’t have anything to do with her in public, so he must realize that she’s not presentable.”

“But the smell and everything. She doesn’t smoke, does she?”

“Look, if you needed to, and there was nothing else available, you’d piss in a dirty toilet, right? So don’t be so snobbish.”

“Jesus. Do you suppose he considers that a satisfactory sex life?”

“Survival rations.”

I picked up a clear capsule, dipped it recklessly into the dust, capped it, and tossed it on the pile.

“How many of these things is a dose?”

“I thought we’d just divide whatever there is between us. It takes a lot to get an effect. You want to make some tea to take them with?”