"Those days are over?" I said.

"Not yet," said Vargina. "Or none of us would be sitting here. But it's not looking good. Donors are getting scarce. Everybody's worried. That's really my point. The whole deal's in danger. And maybe it should be. Look at you."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You were an art major, right? What did it get you? Some egg salad from a crack baby?"

"That was good egg salad," I said.

"I know you liked it."

"You're a good friend, Vargina."

"I'm not your friend, Milo."

"Good colleague."

"So are we straight?"

"You still need to tell me the number. So I have an idea about what to shoot for. Unless you want to come in on this, work Purdy with me."

"No, this is your deal."

"So, what's the number?"

"You're thinking small again. It's not a number. It's a feeling. A great, big, wonderful, gleaming feeling."

"Okay," I said. "I think I got it now."

"I know you can do it. I also know you can't do it. But on some level I know you can do it. Good luck."

"Thanks," I said.

"Now I've got a question for you."

"Shoot," I said.

"Do you know anybody who speaks Mandarin?"

"Maybe. Why?"

"I'm just looking into something in Beijing."

"That's exciting."

"Yes, it is."

"Tell me," I said. "Does it have anything to do with that kid who is always sleeping outside Cooley's office?"

"You need to mind your own business. Especially on the subject of business."

"Will do," I said.

"Here," said Vargina, handed me the rest of her egg salad.

"No, I couldn't," I said.

"Yes, you could. Just wash out the dish when you're done."

Seventeen

One night in the House of Drinking and Smoking we were victims of what I would later call a home invasion. I didn't know the term then. I think I learned it later, from a rap song, or a movie based loosely on a newspaper columnist's fear of a rap song.

Probably they thought we'd be out, which was funny, because we were never out. This night, though, we had turned in early. Eve of a test week, I think. Given the soporifics in our systems, I'm still surprised we ever woke up, or that Maurice Gunderson did, to the sound, he said later, of his dresser drawer sliding open. His shriek roused the rest of us, though by then they, the invaders, had dragged Maurice from his bed, commenced what Billy Raskov would by morning term a "total fucking rampage." One of them banged a baseball bat on the walls and they all barked and shouted, flushed us from our smoky caves, herded us into the main room, where we sat in our underwear among the ashtrays and beer bottles that littered the glass coffee table we'd bought at the Salvation Army.

The invaders seemed quite familiar with the modality of the roust, knew the best ways to terrorize, corral. Later we learned at least one of them had been in the non-salvation army.

They wore ski masks, but we could tell by their hands that one was black and two were white. We could tell by their accents they were local. The largest invader, the apparent leader, the bat guy, as I later dubbed him, drifted about the room with his Easton aluminum, tapped our shoulders, our knees, lightly, with humorless threat, while the others drew the shades.

I shivered on the sofa in my boxer shorts. Christmas break was not far off and the house was always cold. Constance and Charles Goldfarb sat beside me and through my grogginess I felt my arm brush Constance's warm shoulder. Two things occurred to me simultaneously: that she must have been in bed with Charles, and that I missed her. Then the bat guy smashed his bat on the coffee table. Maurice Gunderson squealed from his camp chair.

"Shit, just take what you need and get out," he said.

Glass twinkled in his scalp.

"What was that?" said the bat guy.

"I said just take what you need."

"What do I need, faggot? Tell me what I need!"

He reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a small pistol. Its diminutive aspect did not offer comfort.

"Calm down, dude," said another invader.

"I'll keep these fairies here," said the bat guy. "You two go upstairs."

"You sure?" said the third invader.

"Just fucking go!" said the bat guy. "I don't have all night."

If he was the leader, he was not a natural one. He seemed more disturbed than the others, twitchier, less clinical in his approach to the burglarious. That they figured we'd have cash and valuables stashed away here on Staley Street was not an indictment of their intelligence, but it did point to a knowledge deficit with regard to the various striations and flavors of capital accumulation at a private university. There were some varsity golfers down the block they would have done much better to rob. Maybe they already had.

I could hear the other two invaders smash around upstairs, pictured them in the blue light of my tiny room. What would they make of the sketches tacked to the wall, the condoms under the futon, the cracked, unstrung Telecaster in the corner (in case the band idea ever blossomed), the scratched record on the Fold 'N Play? Would they see through the pose?

It did not seem odd that I was thinking about this while the bat guy lurched around us and his accomplices tore through our drawers and our duffels full of dirty jeans and jerk-off socks and plastic bongs and mint cookies and Foucault Readers. I was still a little stoned and very tired but I wasn't that frightened. I did not believe that we were in mortal danger, though I sensed some of us could get hurt. The bat scared me more than the gun. I saw it caving a skull, maybe that of Raskov, who sat on the sofa arm near Goldfarb. There was something melon-y and inviting about Raskov's head, I understood that objectively, and despite our frictions the prospect of its stoving did not please me. But the downside of this muted state was that I maybe appeared too comfortable, too fragmented, dreamy, and I suddenly paid for this with a sharp chop to the ribs. I squinted up from the floor into the wool-ringed eyes of the bat guy.

"What!" he said. "What are you staring at!"

"He's not staring at anything, man," said Maurice, his voice high, airless. "Everything's cool. I have morphine. You want that?"

"Fuck your morphine," said the bat guy. "Yeah, give it to me."

"It's in my room."

"Where's your room?"

"End of the hall."

"Go get it. Just fucking stay where you are."

"I am," said Maurice.

"Get back on the couch."

The bat guy turned just as Constance put out her hand for me.

"Don't touch him!" he said. "Shit, you're a chick. Let me see you. You fuck him?"

It's complicated, I wanted to say.

"He's my friend," she said.

"You fuck him. I can tell. You blow him and tell him how smart he is. But he's a dumbshit. Take it from me."

"I can vouch for that," said Billy Raskov.

I didn't take it personally, knew it for some kind of play, a ridiculous one.

"You can vouch for what, potato head?"

"Jesus, Billy," Goldfarb whispered.

The bat guy stuck his bat in the cushions of an armchair behind him, far from our reach, though I noticed Gunderson eye it. Now he snatched a handful of Billy's lank hair, cranked his head back.

"What do you vouch for?"

"Nothing," said Raskov.

"Nothing?"

Raskov snarled as the bat guy bent his head. Constance leaned in and stroked Raskov's knuckles, as though what he needed most now was moral support, the structural integrity of his spinal column a minor matter.

"No," said Raskov. "Just that I can vouch for what you said about the guy over here. Milo. He is a dumbshit."

"Oh, is he?"

"Yeah."

The bat guy slammed Raskov's head down on a spindly wooden end table. A leg splintered.