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steps of what turned out to be the lady’s very impressive home. No. On the steps, smoking a cigarette, there had sat a skinny young woman—almost a girl—in an enormous sombrero and silver high heels. “You don’t want to go in there,” she said, and then she set the sombrero on the steps, and pointed to a car, and drove Carter to an even more dazzling house. She guided Carter through a sidedoor to a group of rooms that she called her parents’ “master suite,” then drew a whirlpool bath for herself and Carter while they drank wine and smoked dope. That girl was cute, but her parents’ bathroom—it was as large as the entire first floor of the house in which he had grown up! It had, in addition to the whirlpool, a sauna, polished wood floors, a tiled shower stall big enough for a group, two built-in hair dryers, enormous baskets of red and green towels that—with a sneering drawl—the girl explained were put out by her mother for use only at the holidays. Of course, Carter had blown all that by pissing in the girl’s bed while they slept, and so he had to sneak out of the house before she woke up and saw.
    â€œI’m a Washington boy myself.” This was what Carter did tell the doctor stitching his hand. “I mean to go back as soon as I save up enough money. A person can still lead a decent life there, you know? Clean air? Trees?”
    Head bent over his work, the doctor asked, “Were you in ’Nam?”
    â€œSixty-nine, seventy.”
    The doctor looked up, winked. He was a small man—wiry, with wiry hair. Younger than Carter, or perhaps just better preserved, less damaged. He had plenty of money, Carter supposed. He would have stayed in college while Carter was over there.
    â€œYou taking any antidepressants?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œFrancie”—the doctor stuck his hands in the pockets of his white coat and turned to the nurse—“call the Accordion Cafe and tell them we’re going to give Mr. Clay, here, a shot and send him home for the rest of the afternoon.”
    When the nurse left the room, the doctor leaned close to whisper, “Demerol. This stuff’ll make you feel so much better, if you went back to work, you might cut your whole finger off and not even know it!”
    For fear his face might give him away, Carter covered his mouth with his good hand and tried to look merely curious, sociable. Which was not easy. In Carter’s good ear, Demerol was a hymn so lovely its pure vibrations ignited and burned to ash themessage that Carter carried with him from the poster in the front hall of Recovery House:
    NO PAINKILLERS, DIET PILLS (or other stimulants),
SLEEP AIDS, TRANQUILIZERS, COUGH SYRUPS,
MOUTHWASH, and/or MUSCLE RELAXANTS.
What does no mean?
NO MEANS NO.
    Once the smoke from his little fire cleared, Carter reflected—heart thumping—that surely, if it was normal for a doctor to prescribe a shot, it was normal to take it; and when the nurse returned with the syringe held up before her like a holy candle, and the doctor told Carter to lie back for a minute, Carter did not allow himself to think of the chip ceremony of the night before or how, while everyone else clapped, Earla R. had hugged him to her old-lady breasts—big and loose as feather pillows—and whispered, “Think,” and then as she released him, “A word to the wise is sufficient.”
    â€œMan”—the ponytailed doctor raised Carter’s chart to his forehead in merry farewell salute—“man, your hand may still hurt, but you ain’t gonna give a damn!”
    Blessings. By the time that Carter got his shirt on, and spoke with the woman handling the paperwork, and stepped out into the waiting room, he felt suffused with blessings. Best of all, he was quite certain that those blessings had nothing to do with the Demerol. They had to do with the friendly doctor and the kind nurse and the