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anesthesia. Les smiled and sweated while an Acolyte futilely tried his lawyer on the phone. Was he under arrest? He wasn’t, said the harridan. He had watched enough television to know it was time to ask her to leave.
    He sat there shaking. His support team—soft-treading Mephisto-hoofed angels—fed him Xanax and evinced outrage. Les called a few of the men she’d named. He got through to the one he knew least, an ENT guy who shrugged it off. “They came after me before, the dicks. Listen, they got nothing else to do. I tell ’em to get a life.” Les canceled his appointments and holed up in the Game room, waiting for Obie and Calliope to return his calls. When Les hurt, the Acolytes hurt; they bused in fried chicken from the Ivy, but he wouldn’t eat. Calliope was finally on the line. She heard the familiar panic in his voice and told him “not to go there.” The shrink said it wasprobably some sort of scare tactic, not that she knew so much about this sort of thing. She asked him point-blank if he
had
over-prescribed. He said it was all insane. Four thousand Percocets and Vicodins, the woman said, over fourteen months! How was that possible? Obie was his closest friend. He lived in her house for five months after the earthquake while his place was redone. He’d been through the wars with this girl: surgeries, depressions, divorce. He had been there for her, and she for him—when boyfriends stomped his heart. Obie was childless. In sweetly hushed, narcotic late night phone calls, from one wing of the house to the other, she told him to give a gob of sperm so they could make a baby; she was burned out on relationships, she said, but wanted a kid. Les never took her seriously (such a terrifying merge was beyond his wildest fantasies of celebrity bonding) but was flattered and moved nonetheless. He made her repeat the proposition at parties, so everyone could hear.
    â€œFour thousand pills is a lot,” said Calliope.
    â€œIt’s
not
four thousand, it
couldn’t
be. Are you turning against me?”
    She changed tack. “Les, I don’t want you getting paranoid.”
    A little after six, he left through the Private Door. His advocate got through to the Lotus (with the LESISMOR plate) and told him not to worry—“there’s no case.” There was something troubling and possibly illegal, he said, something
political
, about the entire visit. He’d make a few calls; he had DEA friends who would give him the skinny. Not to worry. Les felt better, having mustered the troops.
    He couldn’t sleep. He talked to Obie and she was loaded. She said it was all a “bad joke” and was going to break the next day in the
Times
. They talked about a name on the DEA list, a man Les knew only in passing. He’d seen him at Obie’s and other Big Star homes. For six hundred dollars, Stuart Stanken made housecalls at any hour of the day and night (he had an answering machine instead of an office). If Big Star had root canal or migraine or hint of kidney stone—or if Big Star was depressed over AIDS death or bad breakup, hair loss or loss of movie role—Stu Stanken was there. He’d shoot them with morphine and stay awhile as they nodded, chit-chatting, admiring the decor and general Big Starness as the systemic valentine was delivered. An hour later he’d dispense an intramuscular booster, just to be safe. I don’t want your pain coming back when I’m fifteen minutes out the door.
You need never suffer from pain again
, he intoned,
not so long as I am here to help
. Les used to bridle on running into him at Obie’s parties, and he told her so. Being with Stanken was like having a dipso chiropractor in your midst—or an abortionist out of Faulkner. Now, it looked as if they’d be sharing a line-up.
    Three in the morning. Propelled from bed by a nightmare, he stood in his Charvet robe before the bathroom mirror of his