Or, he thought, I could try something much stronger. Emphytal.

Three of those, he thought, and I'd never wake up. Not in the strength capsules I've got. Here ... he let the capsules lie on his palm as he stood considering. No one would bother me; no one would intervene—

The medicine cabinet said, "Mr. Garden, I am establishing contact with Dr. Macy in Salt Lake City, because of your condition."

"I have no condition," Pete said. He quickly put the Emphytal capsules back in their bottle. "See?" He waited. "It was just momentary, a gesture." Here he was, pleading with the Rushmore Effect of his medicine cabinet—macabre. "Okay?" he asked it hopefully.

A click. The cabinet had shut itself off.

Pete sighed in relief.

The doorbell sounded. What now? he wondered, walking through the faintly musty-smelling apartment, his mind still on what he could take as a soporific—without activating the alarm-circuit of the Rushmore Effect. He opened the door.

There stood his blonde-haired previous wife, Freya. "Hi," she said coolly. She walked into the apartment, gliding past him, self-possessed, as if it were perfectly natural for her to seek him out while she was married to Clem Gaines. "What do you have in your fist?" she asked.

"Seven Snoozex tablets," he admitted.

"I'll give you something better than that. It's going the rounds." Freya dug into her leather mailbag-style purse."A new, new product manufactured in New Jersey by an autofac pharmaceutical house, there." She held out a large blue spansule. "Nerduwel," she said, and then laughed.

"Ha-ha," Pete said, not amused. It was a gag. Ne'er-do-well. "Is that what you came for?" Having been his wife, his Bluff partner, for over three months, she of course knew of his chronic insomnia. "I've got a hangover," he informed her. "And I lost Berkeley to Walt Remington, tonight. As you well know. So I'm just not capable of banter, right now."