How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely

dribbled down his stubble.
    The next week, I started making parries and thrusts of conversation. I asked him about his work at Lascar and his med school studies and what it was like to carve up a cadaver.
    “You stop seeing it as a person,” he said.
    “That’s interesting. I totally can see that.” I paused while the Danish campers lustily sang competing campfire songs. “Man, I could never make it in med school. I’ve always had trouble concentrating. Probably has something to do with never knowing my dad.”
    I left that one hanging there.
    When he got home a few nights later, I was wearing a button-up shirt and my finest dining-out pleateds. As he opened the door I was tonging ice into my two surviving Larry Bird commemorative glasses, our apartment’s finest drinkware.
    “Oh, hey Hobart.”
    “Hello.”
    “I thought, you know, Friday night and all, we should have a cocktail hour. Like gentlemen, you know?” I poured two glasses and offered him one. “It’s MacAllister eighteen,” I said, before a slow and gentlemanly sip. “Mmm, very peaty .”
    I handed him a Scotch.
    * * *
    Two hours later: Hobart was holding forth in a voice that quivered with anguish. Scotch slopped all over the carpet as he paced back and forth.
    “She says she’s ‘coming into her own as a woman.’ Into her own ! That the distance is good for us! She said ‘we’re better as two separate entities that care about each other than as one unit.’ Bullshit!”
    “Man.”
    “It’s bullshit! And she’s always, she’s mentioning all the time Nevin .”
    “Yikes.”
    “Some guy named Nevin who works at Washington Mutual. ‘You’d like him.’ She said that! I wouldn’t like him! I friggin’ . . . I hate him!”
    “That’s tough, man. But, you know, give it some time. It’ll work out.”
    “It sucks!”
    “Yeah man, I hear ya. I’ve been having a rough time, too. I lost my job.”
    “It sucks.”
    “Yeah. I mean, I’ve been working on my résumé, but I just have so much trouble concentrating.”
    “Concentrating. That’s all I ever do is concentrating.”
    “It’s just, you know, I don’t know if I’m gonna make rent.”
    This seemed to hit, triggering Hobart’s terror of disorder. He looked up at me. “Dude are you serious?” He seemed to grasp instantly how unnatural he sounded saying dude .
    “Yeah.” This was not true. Signing up for unemployment had been easy, made me feel like a real writer, and had me stable for a while.
    “That’s . . . God!”
    “Yeah. If I could just figure out a way to concentrate .”
    Hobart’s eyes showed determination as he struggled to stay seated upright. I saw my time to strike.
    “Hey, you guys at Lascar are working on a drug for that kind of stuff, for like hyperactivity and stuff?” A pause. Then he spoke, slurred, as though reading off a chart on the wall.
    “Reutical is a medication designed to reduce the symptoms of hyperactivity and ADD, improving focus and concentration in adolescent males.”
    “So it helps kids pay attention in school and stuff?” Heavy, thudding nods from Hobart.
    “I mean, it probably has something to do with never knowing my dad. I’ve tried all different stuff that doctors gave me.” This was not true. “But one of them said the only thing that might help was this Reutical thing. Do you think you could get me some?”
    There was a long pause, as his whiskey-soaked neurons made ethical calculations.
    “We’re only in phase two trials.” He said this as though it concluded the matter.
    “So that’s experiments, right?”
    “Yeah, experiments.”
    “Sweet. I mean, I’ll be an experiment.”
    Hobart laughed. “We’re all friggin’ experiments.” Some rolling of the head about his neck like a statue teetering on a podium.
    “You know it’s great what you do. It’s medicine, after all. To help people.”
    I fixed him with my eyes.
    “Hobart, you’re a good roommate. And a good friend. I knew you’d help me out on