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thanks, Richard. But I think I'll go on home. Not much in the mood for lighthearted comedies."
    "Actually, according to reviews it's a gripping, compelling tale of obsession and madness."
    "Well then. I definitely don't need any more of that. I get gripped and compelled real hard, every day I go in to work. Most
     nights too, I don't turn the phone and the beeper off."
    Tammy put the check down. I reached, but Don already had it.
    "My turn."
    Outside, eveiything about the night was quietly transformed. Humidity softened the edge of buildings; glistening wet, the
     streets looked clean and new; even the headlights of oncoming cars were wrapped in shells of soft white. We walked together
     a block or two, to Don's car, the same ancient Regal he'd had for years. Richard continued up Prytania.
    "Drop you, Lew?"
    "Thanks, but I'll walk. Great night."
    He looked around. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is. Let me know how things turn out at the hospital?"
    "Don." He'd gotten in. I leaned down to be at a level. "You going to be all right?"
    "Sure. Sure I will. We always are, aren't we, you and me?"
    "It's been a long siege, my friend."
    "Yeah, just sometimes I get tired of looking at the goddamn white of their eyes, know what I mean?"
    I nodded and shut the door for him. He looked through the window at me a moment, then rolled it down and stuck out his hand.
     I took it and we shook. It seemed an odd thing to do with so old and close a friend.
    I watched him drive off, into the night. Thinking I'd walk partway then get a cab, I cut over to St Charles and wound up,
     instead, walking the whole distance.
    The upper parts of buildings were gone, as though, from the sky down, everything were slowly dissolving, slowly becoming insubstantial.
     Cars materialized beside me all at once out of the mist. Buses loomed up like sudden cliffs. Walking across Jackson to Claiborne,
     I came upon two men sitting together in the shelter of a cardboard box shouting a tuneless duet. Even their words, as far
     as I could tell, were invented.
    After all, Beckett says, when you're in the last bloody ditch there's nothing left but to sing.

5

    HIS EYES WENT from the doctor's face to mine, back and forth. They were wholly without emotion or recognition, without presence, lifeless and flat as lentils; and otherwise he made no visible effort to move. His arms lay out beside him on the bed. His
     feet had thick, horny undersides, as though sandal soles had been grafted on. The toes turned in.
    He was probably older than he looked.
    "You can talk now, sir. Though you're going to have an awfully sore throat for a while. Can you tell me who you are?"
    The doctor's name was Bailey. He bent to hang an oxygen cannula over the man's ears and adjust it Straightening, he looked
     across the bed at me and shook his head.
    Through two narrow windows set together in a corner I could see only the mist roiling outside—not even the city's lights.
     We were on the third floor.
    "Can you tell me what day it is, sir? Do you know where you are?"
    Just those eyes, arcing back and forth.
    That blankness.
    "You're going to be allright. You've had an accident You're in the intensive care unit at University Hospital. You came in
     last night, Tuesday. So this is Wednesday." He paused. u Now can you tell me where you are?"
    He waited a moment. Still nothing.
    He turned away.
    "I don't know. Looks like we're definitely going to need a neuro consult."
    He dropped the endotracheal tube with its cluster of tape into a wastebasket beside the bed, went to the sink and squirted
     Betadine from a dispenser mounted on the wall. Started washing his hands.
    "You want to page the medicine intern for me? I'm getting no breath sounds on the right," a nurse called from one of the beds
     across the room. At the central desk a unit secretary picked up the phone. "Also a stat chest and an ABG."
    Bailey stepped from behind the partitioning curtain. "I'm already on the unit," Bailey said. "Excuse me, Mr.