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‘Was it transcendent? The term in Struck’s literature? Or was it transcendental?’

‘ ‘s the difference for Christ’s sake?’

‘Mike, what if I said I’ve been moving toward more than just a month off.’

‘Abandon All Hope.³ This what I was talking.’

‘I mean maybe make a decision. Forever. What if it was that I was doing it more and more and it was getting less fun but I was still doing it more and more, and the only way to moderate would be to like wave a hankie at it altogether.’

‘I applaud. Some low-risk transcendentalism with me and the Human Hatchet could be just the impotence for this kind of like major re—’

‘But it’d be everything. Blue Flames, the odd ‘drine. If I do anything I know I’d go back to the Bob. I’d drop Madame Psychosis with you guys and all my firmest resolve would melt and I’d have the one-hitter out and be sniveling at you to spring some eternal Hope on me.’

‘You’re so naïve, Inc. You’re so sharp in one way and such a little bald little fat-legged baby in the woods in others. You think you’re just going to go Here I go, deciding, and reverse total thrust and quit everything?’

‘What I said was what if.’

‘Hal, you are my friend, and I’ve been friends to you in ways you don’t even have a clue. So brace yourself for a growth-spurt. You want to quit because you’re starting to see you need it, and —’

‘That’s exactly it. Peems, think how horrible that’d be, if somebody needed it. Not just liked it a great great great deal. Needing it becomes a whole separate order of… It seems horrific. It seems like the difference between really loving something and being —’

‘Say the word, Inc.’

‘Because you know why? What if it’s true? The word. What if you are? So the answer’s just walk away? If you’re addicted you need it, Hallie, and if you need it what do you imagine happens if you just hoist the white flag and try to go on without it, without anything?’

‘You lose your mind, Inc. You die inside. What happens if you try and go without something the machine needs? Food, moisture, sleep, O₂? What happens to the machine? Think about it.’

‘You were just now applauding the idea of Abandoning All Hope. You were just invoking an image of me with breasts, masturbating into laundry, with cobwebs between my ass and a chair.’

‘That’s the Bob. I didn’t hear me say everything. If you need the Bob, Inc, you can only quit the Bob if you move onward and up to something else.’

‘Harder drugs. Just like those old filmstrips about pot opening the door to larger drugs, where Jiminy Cricket —’

‘Oh fuck you. It doesn’t have to be harder. It just has to be something. I know guys quit heroin, coke. How? They make the strategic move to a case a day of Coors. Or to methadone, whatever. I know hard-drinking guys Inc that got off the booze by switching to the Bob Hope. Me myself, you’ve seen, I switch all the time. The trick is the right switch for a man’s wiring. I’m saying a real cobweb-blaster with me and Axford after the Fundraiser could help you get some serious perspective, cut the babytalk and sweeping bullshit decisions there’s no way you can do and start getting a real handle on how you’re going to branch out away from this Bob thing, which I applaud the getting away from the Bob for you, Inc, it’s not your thing, you were starting to get that look of a guy that’ll end up with tits.’