I HAD to think! Ktch and his cohorts were snugly tucked away in their slumber tanks or whatever — it was difficult to imagine them using anything I’d recognize as a bed — and Laszlo was safely gone about his usual business of soiling the Village. This was my big chance — maybe my last chance — to dream up some way to foil the lobsters and save the world, or at least to escape from that loft and find Mike and let him save the world. I had to think!

However, I was still being tortured. All around me I could see tiny noises intertwining like spaghetti in the air. My body was covered with acute perceptions of color in flux — solemn reds, introspective blues, pulsating greens and browns — all intimate and not to be ignored. My ears were full of the flavor of hot buttered corn with salt and lemon juice. (And oh, yes, I was still hungry, which felt a bit like being underwater.) I could taste smoothness and abrasiveness and sharpness alternating in intricate patterns of what was not quite motion, and the temperature of the air — night-cool, growing cooler — smelled… I don’t have a word for how it smelled. Like calculus, perhaps?

This was not at all unpleasant. In fact, I’d spent lots of money in my day for exotic Pharmaceuticals I’d hoped would produce some such effects. No, it wasn’t unpleasant (though the taste is probably an acquired one), but it interfered with thinking something fierce.

“I’ve got to ignore all this,” I told myself in a moment of fleeting clarity. But the only sensation I’d ever practiced ignoring was pain, the one sensation I wasn’t currently experiencing.

It was impossible to keep anything in mind. I’d start a train of thought going, and before it got past the verb it would dissolve in a welter of meaningless sensations. And the most frustrating thing about it was that I couldn’t hold my mind still long enough to be frustrated.

I have no idea how long this went on.

Mike, meanwhile, was tailing Laszlo, an inherently thankless task.

“It wasn’t as easy as it should’ve been. The freak seemed to be nervous about something. He kept looking back over his shoulder as though he were being followed or something, which kept me busy ducking in and out of doorways, hiding behind lampposts, crouching behind tourists, making an ass of myself in general.

“You know, it’s kind of embarrassing when you’re hiding behind some tourist and he turns around and asks you what you’re doing and you say you’re following somebody and he wants to know why. What do you say in a case like that?

“So he was hard to follow, and I didn’t think that was at all fair. I mean, hadn’t expected it to be much fun, but work… ?”

Nursing this comfortable sense of instant injustice, Michael followed Laszlo from The Garden of Eden half a block east to the corner drugstore, first stop. Laszlo slithered up to the prescription counter, and Mike ducked into a phone booth.

“What do You want?” said Dr. Lee, the pharmacist, who was a Villager and knew Laszlo.

“Can you, like, take somethin’ an’, you know, find out what it is? Huh, Doc? Can you?”

Laszlo was doing his best to be polite, which made Dr. Lee be wary. “Generally,” he said, “I know what it is before I take it. Yes, Ma’am, can I help you?”

Laszlo tapped his feet and snapped his fingers anxiously for ten minutes while Dr. Lee listened with near-infinite patience to the overwhelming troubles of a fat Italian lady and sold her a box of aspirin for them. Then, “Are you still here?”

“Look, Doc…”

“What’re you looking for, Georgie? I’m busy.”

“Oh wow! Listen, Doc, s’pose I was to give you this Pill, see? Can you, like, ah, find out what’s In it? Can you, Doc? Huh? Can you?”

“Yes ,sir, can I help you?” Another customer.

Laszlo by now was almost dancing in frustration, which pleased Michael no end, but the customer only wanted a pack of cigarettes.

“Let me get this straight,” said Dr. Lee resignedly. “You want me to analyze some pill for you. Is that it?”

“Yeah, yeah! Analyze. That’s it, yeah’ Can you, Doc?” He pulled a transparent plastic bag full of little blue pills out of his right coat pocket. Bits of lint and dirt and God knows what clung to the outside of the bag.

“Well,” slowly and thoughtfully, “I can, I suppose. I’ve got a little lab at home that… Why should I?”

“Huh?”

“Why should I go to all the trouble of analyzing anything for you? Tell me that? What’ve you ever done for me, besides give me a hard time? You don’t even buy your Cigarettes here.”

“Oh wow!” waving the pill bag about in agitation. “Look, Doc, I’ll Pay you!”

“Oh?” No one had ever heard Laszlo say those words before. Doc Lee thought it over for a moment. “Okeydoke,” he said. “I’ll try, anyhow. Those the pills?”

“Yeah. Here, Doc.” Laszlo handed him one pill.

“I’ll need more than one,” said the kindly pharmacist, peering at the little blue pill in his palm.

“More than one?” Laszlo didn’t like this*

“Right. Ten at least, maybe more.”

“Ten?” He clutched the pill bag tightly to his chest. “Ten?”

Dr. Lee ignored this method acting. “Where’d you get this stuff?” he asked. “What’s it for?”

“I, ah, somebody gave it to me. Yeah.”

“Somebody gave it to you. Did he tell you what it’s for? Diet? Headache? Cramps? Leukemia? It looks like a… Hmm!”

“What’s wrong?” Laszlo backed a few inches away from the counter. “Somethin’ wrong?”

“I just remembered. You’re the maniac who’s been handing out those whatchamacallim — Reality Pills. Right?”

“Who, me?”

“Is that what this thing is? Hmm.”

“Look, Doc, ah, let’s,” backing away, “let’s just forget it, okay?”

“Sure, I’ll analyze the things, if I can. I’ve been wondering about them myself. But I’ll still need more’n one.”

“Oh wow! Like, ForGet It!” Laszlo turned and ran for the door.

“Hey, what’s wrong with you? Come back here. Laszlo! Take your pill…” Too late. Laszlo was gone.

Too late. Laszlo was gone.

“How do you like that?” Doc Lee wondered aloud. “The wicked flee where none pursueth.”

“Not this time, Doc,” said Michael, laughing, as he left.

The trail led down MacDougal Street — Laszlo, looking apprehensively in all directions, on one side; Michael, taking advantage of every bit of cover, on the other — to Bleecker Street and then turned left, heading toward the East Side.

“I’d never seen Laszlo move so fast before,” Mike said later. “He passed five whole coffeehouses without going in, and he passed dozens of chicks without coming on to any of them, and he walked right by Pat Gerstein without even slowing down to trade insults. Extraordinary, I told myself. Very odd.

“I was tempted to catch up with him and ask him what was bothering him, but I didn’t think he’d understand, so I didn’t. Laszlo has a flair for not understanding.”

They crossed West Broadway almost at a run and faded into the anonymous night.

My long green fur could’ve used a brushing and my left fore-ear itched a little, but otherwise I was doing nicely, thanks. Of course, I wasn’t really used to the sky’s being orange, but I wasn’t used to having six legs, either, or to being surrounded by hundred-foot-tall red ferns with stems ten feet thick at the base. No matter. I’d get along.

I took a bite out of the nearest fern tree. Good. It tasted just like hundred-foot-tall red fern, with lots of crunch and juice. I liked it.

There were some predators in the neighborhood — mostly those slimy brown and yellow snakish things with all the legs and teeth: the worst kind — but I didn’t care. I could handle them all right.

My only problem was that I still couldn’t manage to organize my thoughts, which, for some not quite remembered reason, I absolutely had to do.