I emptied the bottle of its last drop, put the cap back on and threw it into the little basket beside the toilet. Then I had to steel myself against throwing up. I sat on the

edge of the bathtub for a while, clutching the sides of it tightly, and stared at the wall opposite, afraid even to close my eyes.

Over the next five minutes, before the codeine kicked in, there were two more occurrences, both brief as flickers in a slideshow, but no less terrifying for that. From

the edge of the bathtub, and with no conscious movement on my part, I found myself standing in the middle of the living-room. I stood there, swaying slightly, trying to

act unfazed – as if ignoring what had happened might mean it wouldn’t happen again. Soon after that – click, click – I was half-way down the stairs, sitting on the

bottom step of the first landing with my head in my hands. I realized that another trip-switch forward like that and I’d be outside on the street, being mobbed by

photographers and reporters – maybe in danger, maybe a danger to others, certainly out of control …

But I could feel the onset now of a heaviness in my limbs and a kind of general spaciness. I stood up, grabbing on to the banisters for support, and turned around. I

made my way slowly back up to the third floor. Walking now was like wading through treacle and by the time I got to the door of my apartment, which was wide open,

I knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere.

It then took me a couple of moments, standing in the doorway, to realize that the ringing sound I was hearing wasn’t just in my head. It was the telephone, and before

I’d had time to reason that I shouldn’t be answering the telephone, given my present state, I was watching my hand floating down to pick up the receiver and then

floating back up again towards my head.

‘Hello.’

‘Eddie?’

I paused for a moment, in shock. It was Melissa.

‘Eddie?’

‘Yeah, it’s me. Sorry. Hi.’

My voice felt heavy, slack.

‘Eddie, why did you lie to me?’

‘I didn’t … wh-what are you talking about?’

‘MDT. Vernon. You know what I’m talking about.’

‘But—’

‘I’ve just been reading the Post, Eddie. Short-selling stocks? Second-guessing the markets? You? Come on.’

I didn’t know what to say. Eventually, I came up with, ‘Since when do you read the New York Post?’

‘These days the Post’s about all I can read.’

What did that mean?

‘I don’t under—’

‘Look, Eddie, forget the Post, forget the fact that you lied to me. MDT is the problem. Are you still taking it?’

I didn’t answer. I could barely keep my eyelids open.

‘You’ve got to stop taking it. Jesus.’

I paused again, but had no clear sense this time of how long the pause went on for.

‘Eddie? Talk to me.’

‘OK …

Now she paused, and then said, ‘Fine, when?’

‘You tell me.’

When I spoke, my tongue felt thick and swollen.

‘Tomorrow. In the morning. I don’t know – eleven-thirty, twelve?’

‘OK. In the city?’

‘Fine. Where?’

I suggested a bar on Spring Street.

‘Fine.’

That was it. Then Melissa said, ‘Eddie, are you OK? You sound strange. I’m worried.’

I was staring down at a knot in one of the floorboards. I rallied all of my strength and managed, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Melissa.’

Then, without waiting for an answer, I put the phone down.

I staggered over to the couch and lowered myself on to it. It was the middle of the afternoon and I’d just drunk a whole bottle of cough syrup. I laid my head on the

armrest and stared up at the ceiling. Over the next half an hour or so, I was aware of various sounds drifting in and out of my consciousness – the door-buzzer, possibly

someone banging on the door, voices, the phone ringing, sirens, traffic. But none of it was clear enough, or compelling enough, to rouse me from the torpor I was in,

and gradually I sank into the deepest sleep I’d had for weeks.

[ 17 ]

OUT COLD UNTIL FOUR O’CLOCK the next morning, I spent a further two hours struggling to emerge from the other side of this paralysing blanket of drowsiness. Some

time after six, aching all over, I dragged myself off the couch and slouched into the bathroom. I had a shower. Then I went into the kitchen and put on a large pot of

coffee.

Back in the living-room, smoking a cigarette, I found myself glancing continually over at the ceramic bowl on the shelf above the computer. But I didn’t want to get

too close to it, because I knew that if I went on taking MDT, I would just end up having more of these mysterious and increasingly scary blackouts. On the other hand, I

didn’t really believe that I’d had anything to do with putting Donatella Alvarez into a coma in the first place. I was prepared to accept that something had happened,

and that during these blackouts I continued functioning on one level or another, moving about, doing stuff, but I refused to accept that this extended to me striking

someone over the head with a blunt instrument. I’d had a similar thought a few minutes earlier in the bathroom, while I was having my shower. There were still bruises

on my body, as well as that small circular mark, fading now, of what had seemed to be a cigarette burn. This was incontrovertible evidence, I’d concluded, of

something, but hardly of anything to do with me …

I wandered reluctantly over to the window and looked out. The street was empty. There was no one around – there were no photographers, no reporters. With any

luck, I thought, the mystery trader of the tabloids had already become yesterday’s news. Besides, it was Saturday morning and things were bound to be a little quieter.

I sat on the couch again. After a couple of minutes, I got back into the position I’d been in all night, and even started to doze a little. I felt pleasantly drowsy now,

and kind of lazy. This was something I hadn’t felt for ages, and although it took me a while, I eventually linked it in with the fact that I hadn’t taken an MDT pill in nearly

twenty-four hours, my longest – and only – period of abstinence since the beginning. It had never occurred to me before to just stop, but now I thought – well, why not?

It was the weekend, and maybe I deserved a break. I would need to be charged up for the meeting with Carl Van Loon on Monday, but until then there was no reason

why I shouldn’t be able to chill out like a regular person.

However, by eleven o’clock I didn’t feel quite so relaxed about things, and as I was getting ready to go out a vague sense of disorientation crept over me. But since

I’d never really given myself the chance to let the drug wear off properly, I decided to stick to my plan of temporary abstinence – at least until I’d spoken to Melissa.

*

Down on Spring Street I left the sunlight behind me and stepped into the dim shadows of the bar where we’d arranged to meet. I looked around. Someone gestured to

me from a booth in the corner, a raised hand, and although I couldn’t see the person clearly from where I was standing, I knew that it had to be Melissa. I walked over

towards her.

On my way to this place from Tenth Street, I’d felt very weird indeed, as if I had taken something after all and was coming up on it. But I knew it was actually the

reverse, that it was more like a curtain being lifted on raw, exposed nerves, on feelings that hadn’t seen the light of day for some time. When I thought about Carl Van

Loon, for example, or Lafayette, or Chantal, I was first struck by how unreal they seemed, and then by a kind of retrospective terror at my involvement with them.

When I thought about Melissa, I was overwhelmed – blinded by a pixel-storm of memories …

She half got up as I arrived and we kissed awkwardly. She sat back down on her side of the booth. I slid into the opposite side to face her.

My heart was pounding.

I said, ‘How are you doing?’ and it immediately seemed odd to me that I wasn’t commenting on how she looked, because she looked so different.

‘I’m OK.’

Her hair was short and dyed a kind of reddish brown. She was heavier – generally, but especially in the face – and had lines around her eyes. These made her look

very tired. I was one to talk, of course, but that didn’t make it any less of a shock.

‘So, Eddie, how are you?’

‘I’m OK,’ I lied, and then added, ‘I suppose.’

Melissa was drinking a beer and had a cigarette on the go. The place was almost empty. There was an old man reading a newspaper at a table near the door and

there were two young guys on stools at the bar. I caught the eye of the barman and pointed at Melissa’s beer. He nodded back at me. The normality of this little routine

belied how strange and unsettled I was feeling. A few weeks earlier I’d been sitting opposite Vernon in a booth of a cocktail lounge on Sixth Avenue. Now, thanks to

some unaccountable dream-logic, I was sitting in a booth opposite Melissa in this place.

‘You look good,’ she said. Then, holding up an admonitory finger, she added, ‘And don’t tell me I look good, because I know I don’t.’

It occurred to me that despite the changes – the weight, the lines, the weariness – nothing could eradicate the fact that Melissa was still beautiful. But after what she’d

said I couldn’t think of any way to tell her this without sounding patronizing. What I said was, ‘I’ve lost quite a bit of weight recently.’

Looking me straight in the eyes, she replied, ‘Well, MDT will certainly do that to you.’

‘Yeah, I suppose it will.’

In as quiet and circumspect a voice as I could muster, I then asked, ‘So, what do you know about all of this?’

‘Well,’ she said, taking a deep breath, ‘here’s the bottom line, Eddie. MDT is lethal, or can be, and if it doesn’t kill you, it’ll do serious damage to your brain, and

I’m talking about permanently.’ She then pointed to her own head with the index finger of her right hand, and said, ‘It fucked my brain up – which I’ll go into later – but

the point I want to make now is, I was one of the lucky ones.’

I swallowed.

The barman appeared with a tray. He placed a glass of beer down in front of me and exchanged the ashtray on the table with a clean one. When he’d gone, Melissa

continued. ‘I only took nine or ten hits, but there was one guy who took a lot more than that, over a period of weeks, and I know he died. Another unfortunate shmoe

ended up as a vegetable. His mother had to sponge him down every day and feed him with a spoon.’

My stomach was jumping now, and a mild headache had started up.

‘When was this?’

‘About four years ago.’ She paused. ‘Vernon didn’t tell you any of this stuff?’ I shook my head. She seemed surprised. Then, as though great physical effort were

required for what she was doing, she took a deep breath. ‘OK,’ she went on, ‘so about four years ago Vernon was hanging out with a client of his who worked at

some pharmaceutical plant and had access that he shouldn’t have had to a whole range of new drugs. One of them in particular, which didn’t have a name yet and

hadn’t been tested, was supposed to be … amazing. So, in order to test it, because of course they were too goddamned shrewd to test it themselves, Vernon and this

guy started getting people – their friends basically – to take it.’

‘Even you?’

‘Vernon didn’t want me to take it at first, but he talked it up so much that I insisted. You know what I was like, curious to a fault.’

‘It wasn’t a fault.’

‘Anyway, a few of us found ourselves in on this – I don’t know – let’s call it an informal trial period.’ She paused and took a sip from her beer. ‘So what do you

want, I took it and it was amazing.’ She paused again, and looked at me for confirmation. ‘I mean, you’ve taken it, you know what I’m talking about, right?’