It was the end of October and it had been five months since Edgar started wasting away. He’d lost twenty pounds of fat and muscle, his jacket hung loose over his newly slack- skinned torso. Accepting a cigarette from a stranger outside Metropolitan, he inhaled, then leaned his head back and exhaled, the rising plume madding under the streetlight. His doctor said he’d be fine: it was just a matter of getting him on one or two pills, off the cocktail. Edgar had always liked that word; it called to mind a Bette Davis movie, someone descending a staircase in a bias-cut satin number clutching a martini glass. This cocktail was just dozens of pills he counted with careful fingers from plastic bottles into blue and pink plastic packs. It did a number on the body, this avalanche of medication, these strange chemical floods. Like taking ecstasy on a dance floor, but with no high, only comedown. He couldn’t bring a trick back without fearing they’d see the pill boxes by the bed, on the piano, next to the coffee maker in the morning.