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it turned out I didn’t have to worry about that. Around three a.m., he opened them and said, “My name isn’t written in the Book of Life.”
    I had no idea what he was talking about, but answered, “Don’t be stupid. Of course it is.”
    “No—you don’t understand—when they paddled me back here, I was already falling on my way to hell. I was yanked, like I was bungeed, back into this building.” He squeezed my wrist, as if taking my pulse. “It sucked the air out of me.”
    “Jeremy, you’re not going to hell.” My son had no apparent aptitude for small talk, but that was fine, for nor do I. I said, “All that happened was that last night you did some very stupid party drugs, and now you’re paying the price. That stuff fries the wiring in your head like booster cables.”
    “Let’s change the subject.”
    “Done.”
    We sat there feeling foolish.
    Jeremy asked, “So, have you been preparing a speech to give me inside your head for the past twenty years?”
    “Of course. You, too?”
    “Yup.”
    There was more silence, happier this time.
    I said, “Neither of us is going to give the speech, right?”
    “It’d be kind of corny.”
    “It would.”
    “I feel much better already.”
    I asked, “How did you find me? I tried locating you for years with no luck. The government was really prickish about it.”
    “Well, it’s amazing what you can find in this world if you’re willing to sleep with people.” He said this as if he were giving me a household hint.
    “I suppose so.”
    “I’d be a good spy.”
    “I didn’t notice you spying on me for four years, so yes. When was the last time you ate?”
    “As in food?”
    “No, as in tractors. Of course I mean food.”
    “I had a ninety-three-cent piece of pizza yesterday. At noon.” The unusual pizza price was a local merchandising twist; with tax, a slice came to one dollar.
    “Those ninety-three-cent slices are about as good for you as a roasted bandage.”
    “I swiped a block of mozzarella from the supermarket on Davie.”
    “What on earth does that have to do with anything?”
    “Everything. So long as a block of cheese is still vacuum-sealed, the pizzerias accept them as currency. They give you a free slice, and maybe five bucks.”
    “You’d risk a police record for five bucks and a microwaved Band-Aid?”
    “It’s okay. The supermarket gives you two options if they catch you—one: they call the cops, and two: they take a Polaroid of you holding up whatever it was you shoplifted. It’s almost always cheese. And then they tell you never to come back into the store. They have this whole back wall covered with faded photos of street scum holding cheeses. It’s not as if I’m risking a police record. Merely a ritual humiliation.”
    This was genuinely interesting to me. I said so.
    “I bet you something.”
    “What? What do you bet me?”
    “I bet you think I’m street trash.”
    I sighed. “Well, Jeremy, let me check my data so far: drugs; overdose; mesh stockings; cheese theft …”
    “I used to be street trash.”
    “Okay. Sure.”
    “But I stopped being trash a few years ago.”
    “I’m glad to hear that.” I considered this. “Can you do that? I mean, just stop that whole way of life?”
    “Yes. Or I thought I could. Until last night. My friend Jane got me all dragged up for the Rocky Horror show.”
    “So your doctor told me.”
    “Tyson? Man, from what I just saw, she needs a morphine drip and a lost weekend with a tennis pro. She’s one of those doctors who overdoes it. I can tell with one blink.”
    “I think you may be right.”
    “What’s with the puffy face?”
    “I had my wisdom teeth taken out four days ago.”
    “Pain?”
    “No. They gave me lots of drugs.”
    “Any leftovers?”
    “No!” I pretend-swatted him.
    “Never hurts to try.”
    I asked him how he felt. He went quiet. I said, “Hello?”
    He pulled into himself, just like that, his shine gone.
    “Jeremy? Here you are, sick and