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a two-hundred-bucks-an-hour shrink, feel awkward and embarrassed and a little on-edge, and those with adulterous thoughts behind their eyes feel somehow illuminated by the harsh sound of humor, and they know they could never really laugh like that, not here, not now, because they’re living a lie. And despite all else the two men at the wall table are breaking up like there’s no tomorrow and all the laughing has to be used up good and proper before everything comes to an end . . .
    Like that. Just like that. A true and simple story.
    ‘You’re shittin’ me?’ Suitcase-face asks, and then he starts laughing again.
    ‘As God is my witness. . . as God is my fucking witness it’s the truth—’ and then he starts up again, starts up like a fire siren, and if there was anyone upstairs trying to get some sleep they wouldn’t have done, at least not for a while, and perhaps if they’d heard the story they wouldn’t have cared.
    Later – a handful and a half of minutes – and things are back to battery.
    ‘So where do we go from here? You up for hitting a bar or somethin’?’ Smart-suit asks.
    The guy with the well-travelled face – his name is Frank, Frank Duchaunak, and people spend their time asking him what kind of name that is, and he spends his time shrugging and shaking his head and saying, ‘Well hell, I don’t know . . . as good a name as any other I suppose.’ Stands in queues sometimes, like for a passport or in a waiting room, and receptionists and officials double-take and squint, sometimes frowning, and then call out ‘Dutch-nark’ or ‘Doosh-nak’, and he smiles to himself and walks towards them, and then explains how you say it.
    ‘De-show-nak,’ he enunciates quietly, and they smile and nod, and invariably ask, ‘What kind of a name is that?’
    ‘Just a name,’ he replies. ‘As good as any other name you care to mention.’
    Frank winds up his laughing, and the Smart-suit guy – whose name is Don Faulkner – reminds him ‘As God is my fucking witness that’s the truth, Frank . . .’, and then repeats his question: ‘So where are we going from here?’
    Frank shrugs, and then a phone rings, and both of them instinctively reach into coat pockets for cells, and Frank remembers he turned his off when he came in from the street.
    Don Faulkner – without thinking perhaps, or perhaps thinking in slow-motion through alcohol and good humor – holds up the phone and frowns. ‘The precinct,’ he says. ‘You want to know what it is, or do we have them find someone else?’
    ‘Fuck ’em,’ Duchaunak says.
    The phone keeps on ringing. Faulkner looks at it. It hums and buzzes on the table. It edges excitedly towards a plate of gelatinous lemon-honey chicken pieces.
    ‘Fuck,’ he says quietly, so quietly Duchaunak barely hears it, and then Faulkner lifts the phone, pushes the button, answers up.
    ‘Faulkner,’ he says, like he’s confessing to a misdemeanor. He nods. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘He’s here with me.’ And then the caller is saying other things, and Faulkner’s face is changing as he listens, and Duchaunak is creasing his brow with a frown, and feels like he wants to take the phone away from his partner and hear whatever’s being said.
    ‘You’re shitting me,’ Faulkner says, and then he looks at Duchaunak and his eyes are wide – surprised, kind of amazed.
    What?
Duchaunak mouths, and Faulkner does that irritating thing of shaking his head and half-raising his hand.
    ‘What the fuck is it?’ Duchaunak says.
    ‘Okay,’ Faulkner says. ‘Okay, yes . . . on our way.’ He hangs up. He holds the phone in his hand, holds it like he’s fixing on hitting someone with it. He looks away towards the front of the restaurant, and then back at Duchaunak.
    ‘What? Tell me what the fuck is going on?’
    ‘Lenny,’ Faulkner says. ‘Lenny is up in St Vincent’s—’
    ‘What the fuck’s he doing there?’ Duchaunak says, and he’s rising from his chair.
    ‘Sit down a