“Phil.”

“Fire.” He was as happy as a dread with an ounce of weed.

“So how are you? Margaret said you’d be coming out in a few days. So what’s happening with the two of you, by the way? This is all quite strange and new. What’s going on? What happened with the pills?”

“It was an honest accident. The kind of thing that could happen to anybody. D’you know what feng xiu is? It’s the extract from the smegma of this rare Chinese deer. And they use it to make a pill called feng xiu xiang, which you can get in Chinatown.”

“What are these pills good for?”

“Long erections. You can pop one and stay up for twenty minutes. I was having some problems with Margaret and Ian told me what to get and where to get it. You can’t get it everywhere. It’s sold from this little hole in the wall in a cellar on Mott Street. And they’ll only sell it to you if you give them a code word.”

“What?”

“It’s really potent stuff. It’s illegal, actually. It has dangerous side effects.”

“Like what?”

“Well, taken without a meal it can shrivel your cock.”

“So how is this connected to the sleeping pills?”

“Well Margaret’s a hard revver—Ian says she’s the town bike but I don’t take what he says seriously—and we were supposed to be getting together later, so I figured I’d take an extra dose to make her happy. Well, I thought if I took a lot of them I could make her really happy. And I took the wrong pills by accident.”

“Whose pills? And where did this happen?”

“Oh, the pills are mine. I haven’t been sleeping well in the last couple of months. I’m a bit concerned about my career, actually. Good gigs are hard to come by. I’d just left a program at the New School and—”

“Phil, are you serious about all this? I don’t want to laugh then find out that you’ve got, as they say, issues, you know.”

“Fuck, I wish I were joking. But it was kinda cool though. Have you ever had your stomach pumped? Oh, it’s really cool. They hook you up to this big machine and they run a tube down your throat. You should try it just for the experience.”

“Phil, can I ask you a question? Does anything ever bother you?”

“Sure. Not having a gig. But I’ll be fine though.”

“So I’ll come and check you this evening then. I have to take care of certain things in the day. You need anything from the outside? Food or anything?”

“No, the food here’s great.”

“Phil, it’s hospital food.”

“The only thing better is airline food. It’s not the food so much. I like the way they separate everything into compartments. Okay, you could bring me something, but make it something that’s easy to fix up like that. Don’t bring a burrito or anything.”

“So by the way, how’s Ian taking this thing with you and Margaret?”