I said I was his partner—that way they let me sit beside his bed and keep a vigil over him and make a deal with God. Save him—please—and if you do … It was absurd, I still scarcely knew the man and yet suddenly I felt I knew him well and only wanted to be allowed to get to know him better. I should have seen him as unstable and yet instinct told me he was reliable and rocklike and the linchpin that I badly needed. I’d felt contemptuous of the twenty-year start he had on me and how little he had to show for it in hard material terms. Now? Fuck hard material terms I said to God. If he’d been rich he wouldn’t have been needy; and he almost certainly wouldn’t have been in that particular place at that particular time. It was quite a reversal but this same instinct told me that unless I was prepared to go with it I was definitely about to miss out. Instinct or sentimentality? Instinct or guilty conscience? I couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss. All I wanted was for Brad Overton to survive and be happy.
