1986:I saw the girl on the bus today. Standing in the wasteland by the burnt-out shell of the reactor. Posing, with a dirty old tyre, on shiny carbon grit surrounded by the irradiated windswept scrub. Much of the green...

After the pain when the whiskey is gone the formaldehyde freezing in my bones as the catheter drips, my blood's martiniinto the bedpan's—Code Red, beepinglike a dying alarm clock with no fallenangels in this room, only interns flipping through...