My phone throbbed on the nightstand. Purdy's name glowed in the sea green display.

An hour later I stood in a bright, enormous candy shop on the East Side. It was late and the clerks seemed eager to close. Purdy shuffled down rows of bins, sampled the designer licorice and mocha clusters, scooped all manner of lacy goo into baggies. He was unshaven, his linen shirt soiled, limp. The look rather suited his ravening.

"Try the caramel turtles," said Purdy.

"That's okay."

"Really. Try them. They melt in your mind. Do you like that? That's funny"

"Purdy."

"Ever been to this place? It's amazing, right? I come here every few months. Whenever I'm just itching to score some blow, which I know would be a bad thing, and really piss off Melinda, and fuck me up for like three or four days because, let's face it, I'm not a young man anymore, even though I look like one, I come here instead. You've been here, right? This place is famous."

Purdy tacked down another aisle, tossed handfuls of chocolate-dipped filberts in his sack.

"I've seen it before," I said. "From the outside it looks like that giant makeup store in SoHo. They are both like these overlit oases of-"

"Sonofabitch."

Purdy stood before one of the last bins with a queasy look.

"It's that marzipanny shit. I don't like it."

"Skip it," I said.

"My flow is broken. I won't get it back. Let's go to the register."

We walked back up the gleaming aisle. Purdy's mania seemed to subside, the dope scorer's calm after the dope has been scored. He clamped his hand on the back of my head.

"What's that you were saying about oases? I love it when you rip into those eighties pomo raps."

"Oh, it was nothing."

"No, really, I enjoy them. They bring me back. I remember, I couldn't sleep, I'd just track you down, feed you some bong hits, and you were good to go. We kept it hyperreal, didn't we?"

"Don't forget Charles Goldfarb," I said. "That guy could talk your ear off."

"Pretty dry. All theory. No poetry."

"Billy Raskov was the true king of bullshit, though," I said.

"Billy Raskov! I just saw Billy Raskov!"

"Yeah? How's his Parkinson's?"

"Huh? No, really, he was just in town. He had a gallery show. I'm helping him make his movie. Shit, we should all get together, Milo. I should call him now."

"It's two in the morning."

"Bet the fucker's up. He's not a sleeper. He's like me. You're a sleeper, Milo. That's the truth about you."

"Lots of people sleep," I said.

"It's okay," said Purdy. "The main thing is you got out of bed. You came."

We reached the counter and Purdy dumped the candy on it, tossed a credit card onto the pile.

"So," said Purdy. "Should we talk?"

We walked the night city. Purdy gorged on his sweets. I outlined some ideas about his give, careful not to corner him on numbers. We needed a new screening auditorium, maybe a digital art center. These could be significant naming opportunities for Purdy. We wanted to get global, create programs in Europe and Asia and the Middle East, establish alliances with other mediocre universities around the world.

"Sure," said Purdy, pinched a mass grave's worth of gummy frogs into his mouth. "We can do that."

"Which?" I said, waited for him to finish chewing.

"I don't know. All of it?"

"All of it? No disrespect, but-"

"You don't even know, man," said Purdy. He sounded a little sugarshocked. "My pockets run deep. Even these days."

He turned out a pocket and a few loose red hots popped to the pavement.

"Did I pay for those?"

"I think so," I said.

I had to take him at his word about the give, at least for now.

"This is great news," I said. "This is fantastic. We can go into greater detail later but it sounds like what you're saying is-"

"Shit, Milo, don't give me the boilerplate. Let's be people. I didn't hear you say anything about painting. Figured that'd be your interest. Need new studios or something? How about a huge prize? Don't be bashful. You want a sour worm?"

"No, I'm cool."

A police cruiser slowed beside us as we made our way down Madison and I wondered what the cops made of us, if they could see how much fucking candy Purdy was eating, if there were any laws about that. The cop peeled away and Purdy coughed. Dark gobs sprayed out of his mouth.

"Sorry."

"Won't that stuff keep you up?" I said.

"I can't sleep."

"Right."

We'd been walking in endless rectangles and now we were near the candy store again. The lights were out, the security gate down. We leaned up against the wall of a bank and I could feel the cool stone on my back, the billions of dollars thrumming through wires beneath and behind me, or on the night waves above. I wasn't quite sure how they traveled. Or how much they got out anymore.

Now a town car pulled up to the curb. The driver had one scrawny arm out the window. Something about his frizzy hair and enormous eyeglasses seemed familiar.

Purdy pushed off the bank wall.

"Hi, Michael," he said, turned to me. "Can I drop you anywhere?"

"I don't think so, no."

"Please, Milo," said Purdy. "Our meeting isn't over."

"Okay."

I slid in after him. We sailed down the avenue.

"Michael," said Purdy. "Do you want some chocolate or licorice? I know you don't approve of the gummy stuff."

The frizzy head shook in front.

"Your loss. So let's head down to the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, take this man home."

"Good idea," said Michael.

"Really," I said, "you don't have to."

"I know," said Purdy. "But I want to tell you something."

"What's that?"

"I want to tell you a story."

"I don't like stories," I said.

"Everybody likes stories. It's part of being human. We tell each other stories."

"Then I guess I'm not human. Maybe I'm descended from ancient astronauts."

"Please, no ancient astronauts. No crop circles. Let's leave Maurice out of this."

"Maurice Gunderson?"

"He's a prophet, haven't you heard? A pied piper for the psychonautic Mayan rapture set."

"I heard him talk about this once. I didn't understand it."

"Forget Maurice. You were telling me why you don't like stories."

"They take so long," I said. "Most of them are a waste of time. I like jokes. Can you tell me your story in joke form?"

Purdy grinned.

"What is it?" I said.

"Nothing. You just reminded me of the way you were back in school. It's been a while."

"We had dinner last month."

"It's been a while."

Purdy tossed down some jellybeans, stared out the window where the towers on York shot past. This had always been my favorite part of driving over the Queensboro Bridge at night, catching sight of the lives in those lighted boxes, the chandeliers and paintings (always the same art-boom disaster in a shit brown study), the custom shelving, the enormous video screens, the well-off dozing on their leather thrones.

"Well, what's your fucking story then?" I said.

"So aggressive. I'm trying to put it in joke form here. Give me a second."

"How about just an elevator pitch?"

"Elevator pitch. Nice. Very 1989."

"What do you call them now?" I said.

"Stories. It's all about stories, man. Stories are money. Money is a story. I actually once hired a Ghanaian griot for our Friday meetings. It was great."

"Fine," I said. "Tell me the story."

"You don't like stories. Let's stay with the pitch."

"Wonderful."

"Good. Here we go. A rich boy goes to college. He makes a lot of friends. They all think they are special and that they suffer in distinct ways, but they are all hurtling down the same world-historical funnel. They will attempt to professionalize their passions, or else just get jobs. Some will do better than others. Some won't have to do better because of their trust funds. Despite what are often radically different fashion aesthetics, not to mention politics, they are all fundamentally the same."