Among Perry’s options were strangling Larry (an idea appealing in the moment but fraught with sequelae); boldly rising to announce that he was gassy again and going to the lounge (here the virtue was consistency of story, the drawback that Larry might insist on keeping him company); and simply waiting for Larry, whose bones a day of scraping paint had surely wearied, to fall asleep. Perry still had an hour to play with, but he resented the hijacking of his mind by trivialities. His rationality was blazing and tireless and all-seeing, and the problem of Larry made him sensible of the cost of ceaseless blazing, the body’s need for a little boost. The emptier of his two aluminum film canisters was in his pants pocket. He could rub sustenance into his gums without a sound, but he was plagued by unknowns, such as whether his sleeping bag would sufficiently muffle the sound of a lid’s unscrewing. Whether he could open the canister blindly without spilling. (Even a microgram of spillage was unacceptable.) Whether it was wise to partake at all from a canister already so depleted. Whether he shouldn’t at least wait until he could give himself a superior boost nasally. Whether, on second thought, it wasn’t such a bad idea to strangle the person whose interminable throat clearings were standing between him and that boost …