Like your lyrics, all those grisly images on Collateral Damage. And the lyrics on the new record, also very cryptic. You know some critics question whether Blood SuckerSunshine can match the intensity of Collateral Damage. . ”

I know what’s coming. I’ve heard this before. It’s this thing that reporters do. Reference other critics’ opinions as a backhanded way to espouse their own. And I know what she’s really asking, even if she doesn’t: How does it feel that the only worthy thing you ever created came from the worst kind of loss?

Suddenly, it’s all too much. Bryn and the bump watch. Vanessa with my high school yearbook. The idea that nothing’s sacred. Everything’s fodder. That my life belongs to anyone but me. Sixty-seven nights. Sixtyseven, sixty-seven. I push the table hard so that glasses of water and beer go clattering into her lap.

“What the—?”

“This interview’s over,” I growl.

“I know that. Why are you freaking out on me?”

“Because you’re nothing but a vulture! This has fuck all to do with music. It’s about picking everything apart.”

Vanessa’s eyes dance as she fumbles for her recorder.

Before she has a chance to turn it back on, I pick it up and slam it against the table, shattering it, and then dump it into a glass of water for good measure. My hand is shaking and my heart is pounding and I feel the be ginnings of a panic attack, the kind that makes me sure I’m about to die.

“What did you just do?” Vanessa screams. “I don’t have a backup.”

“Good.”

“How am I supposed to write my article now?”

“You call that an article?”

“Yeah. Some of us have to work for a living, you prissy, temperamental ass—”

“Adam!” Aldous is at my side, laying a trio of hundreddollar bills on the table. “For a new one,” he says to Vanessa, before ushering me out of the restaurant and into a taxi. He throws another hundred-dollar bill at the driver after he balks at my lighting up. Aldous reaches into my pocket and grabs my prescription bottle, shakes a tablet into his hand, and says, “Open up,” like some bearish mother.