Each among them had to confess to a loss.

“I lost my skill at baking cakes,” one of them ventured.

“I lost a rucksack once.”

“A ring.”

“My hair.”

“My trigger finger.” The fellow raised his hand, and it was true. It was maimed. There was no trigger finger.

“My beech trees outside Lyon. Every one!”

“My driving privileges.”

“My husband.”

It was amusing how this had slipped in there, and they chuckled.

“My memory.”

They howled at this one.

“It’s true. Can’t remember…get everything mixed up!”

“You never know when the last time for anything might come!”

“Now we’re cooking,” one of the Pauls cried.

My breast…my potency…my beloved Skippy.

Time began to tear through there. Inside, their lives were passing as though in a single night. They longed for a nice Teeny-Tiny, you know, of the GIVE ME MY BONE! sort. For a spectral bridegroom or a brain on a stick, even a vampire or a cannibal. Anything but this deathly entertainment, these dreadful drinks, these hideous old gentlemen whom they were feeling more and more indebted and attached to. These Pauls, urging them on to even greater and more fearful acts of admission to loss. The time passing. The blackness pressing against the greasy windows. And the morning that had always come, delayed.