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claustrophobic and chaotic at the same time. Reminds me of the junk shops in the Village where every inch of space is occupied with objects bearing no relation to each other. Here a golden elephant, there a crystal-framed mirror. The only sign that this place has some connection to Curt is the guitar lying under the piano. Curt nods at it, as if he’s saying hello, or taking inventory, but he doesn’t take it out. Instead, he leads me around three glass cases, two of the overstuffed couches, and several giant carved antelope.
    “Home sweet home,” he says at last.

15.
    THE PLACE ISN’T BIG ENOUGH for two people. Not when I’m one of them.
    We pass through a tiny bedroom, a crowded living room, a narrow kitchen that smells like mold, and a bathroom that’s smaller than I am. I get the distinct impression that the bathroom is Curt’s main reason for giving me the tour, because he ducks inside and removes a bunch of plastic bottles from the medicine cabinet. He sticks one in his shirt and opens the other.
    He flashes it. “See,” he says, “legit.”
    I’m almost positive the name on the bottle reads “Hazel,” so I hesitate, studying the pink plastic rosary beads draped around the toilet.
    “What’s it for?” I ask cautiously. I’m trying to be devious, which always fails.
    Curt shuts the bathroom door and heads down a narrow hallway. I follow and a line of chipped paint flakes off the wall as I pass.

    “Seriously,” I say again, yelling behind him. “What’s it for?”
    Curt stops short and I almost plow into him. I have to grab the wall to steady myself.
    “Listen,” he says, fixing me with a stern look. “Don’t get uptight.” He pulls out one of the bottles he put in his shirt. “It’s prescription. See? Prescription.”
    He hands me the bottle and it does, in fact, have his name on it. I try to force a smile, but my chin quivers with the effort.
Right
, I think,
prescription. I knew that. Didn’t I know that
?
    Fuck. I’m screwing everything up.
    “Sorry,” I say, turning into a huge inflatable dork. “Sorry.”
    For the briefest of moments Curt looks pissed and I watch my future spiral into the abyss. Then the emotion washes away as if it were never there.
    “Never mind,” he says, casually. “Besides, you have more … err … important, shall we say,
consequential
things to worry about.”
    I’m blank. “I do?”
    Curt raises both eyebrows.
    “Well, you’ve got a gig in five weeks.”
    It takes a long time for his words to register, then I stare dumbly. All thoughts of prescription medication disappear from my brain with the exception of an instant desire for Prozac. I can’t help wondering if I heard him correctly because it seems entirely too cruel and arbitrary that Curt could have set something up between last night and this morning. Does the universe—even
my
universe—operate that way?
    The answer is yes.
Of course
Curt set up a gig.
Of course
I am caught in my stupid, impossible, humiliating lie. And the clincher is that now, instead of lying in a vague sort of way using words like “band” and “drummer,” I will have to lie in a very specific way, as in “I’ll be playing a gig on Saturday, November thirteenth, at ten P.M. “
    My brain turns to mush and I develop a stutter.

    “Wh-what are you talking about? Th-that’s not true, is it? You’re kidding, right?”
    The words come out in a splurt, and Curt laughs in a high-pitched, breezy sort of way.
    “Funny,” he muses as his face squinches up. “Relax, T. No uprightness necessary. I have plentiful …
eh-hem
… connections at The Dump, so I went over there after I left your house and, well, see, I pulled us some strings. But no worries … five weeks is
plenty
of time for a, shall we say, ‘smart’ person such as yourself to learn the drums, especially given your …
cough, cough
… background in percussion.”
    It’s a masterful move. He’s taken every subtle nuance of my lie at face value.