The denseness of the sitting-room furnishings, together with its chocolate brown wallpaper and deep-blue fitted carpet, gave it a premature receptivity to the advancing dusk. Although, at 7:30, it was obvious that there was plenty of light left on the other side of its two tall windows, the texture of the room closed stealthily in on itself. When Aaron spoke his voice wandered out plaintively into the incipient evening.

“Have any of you … have any of you decided which way you want to go yet?”

“I have,” said Rex, getting to his feet. He brushed his hair out of his eyes and clapped his hands together. “I want to feel sexed-up, big rigged, violent and strong.”

“I imagine,” said Aaron, his hands already busy inside his box, “I imagine you feel most of those things most of the time, don’t you, Rex?”

“Check. But I want to feel all of them all of the time—all of tonight anyway.”

Aaron took a multicolored capsule and split it with an unsettlingly long thumbnail onto a blank sheet of paper. To the pyramid of powder he added sections of two other pills. Rex was now instructed to fold the paper double, forming a channel down which the brew could be poured into his mouth. He asked if he was allowed to wash it down with whiskey and was told that he might. Aaron held up what could have been an eardrop syringe. “Take two drops of this on your tongue.”

“What was it?” asked Rex, having done so.

“Twisted steel.”

“Casual.”

“You got about a half hour, forty-five minutes. Right … Uh, Matt?”

Matt frowned. “Well, it rather depends on what we’re going to do tonight.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Derek drearily, eyes half closed, “another conformist club crawl.”

“C’mon, Derek,” said Rex, “what in the fuck’s wrong with that? I’m feeling pretty … pretty loose already.”

Matt sat upright. “Well. Obviously I want to feel a bit speedy—in case we dance. And I wouldn’t mind some toradol, or perhaps …”

“Try to be more specific, Matt, please. Don’t talk drugs. Talk feelings, moods.”

“Well, I … I just want to feel pretty good.  Like I had just won a game. Nothing too stressful, though.  Like a game against an AFC South opponent, by at least ten points.”

The room blushed. Raising his quiff-like eyebrows, Aaron rummaged boredly inside the case, eventually bringing out a single pink pill which he lobbed across the room. “Just a straight High extract,” he sighed. “Okay, how about Kyler there?”

Kyler waved a hand negligently in the air. Cleatless, he had no intention of performing a miniature waddle across the room, and the request he was steeling himself to make would in any case be for Aaron’s ears only. “Haven’t quite decided yet. Mind if I sit on it?”

Aaron was smiling at Matt, but quickly returned his gaze to little Kyler. “Sure—but not too long now, okay?  Now, Derek. What do you want?”

“Nothing,” said Derek.

“The fuck, Derek,” yawned Rex, “you’ve got to have something. Why are you so fuckin’ defiant all the time?”

“I didn’t say it defiantly, just in complete boredom. I want a drug, but I want a drug to stop me feeling anything. And to kill the past. That is, if tonight’s going to be as stupid and nasty as it looks like being.”

Amused comment rippled through the room. Aaron stirred himself. “That’ll be no sweat to fix,” he said.

Peyton and Eli obligingly opted for the “usual” (human growth hormone and attention span extenders respectively), while, with considerable pomp, Aaron prepared his own stimulant, setting a match to a combustible powder whose sooty residue he lollipopped onto his forefinger and dipped into his mouth. “It’s called a Holistic Immunization,” he said. “Makes me feel in control. Mm—hey—I forgot: Tom.”

Folding his arms, Tom sat back, his choice musculature extending itself adorably over the sofa. The residual unease that had slowed the atmosphere of the room was instantly chased away by the creamy mellifluousness of his voice.

“A hypothesis,” he said. “It occurs to me that one’s mannerisms, one’s behavioral ticks, are neither quite innate nor quite fortuitous. We project them as mechanisms of defense and appeal, of withdrawal and capitulation; they are means of stylizing our attitude to others and to the world. Forgive me—intolerably ill-put. At any rate, as a profoundly cultivated and therefore profoundly unspontaneous creature I thought it might be interesting if I were shorn of these—my reflexes, my stock responses—so as to become, as it were, socially unclothed. My fetching manner must at times be excessively irritating so I hereby give you the chance to banish it and refurnish me. I throw the matter open: make of me what you will.”

“Isn’t this all somewhat unspecific?” complained Aaron.

“Not for long,” said Tom.

“To begin with,” said Derek, “you could give him a stutter. That at least might make him talk less.”

“Bravo, Derek!” roared Tom. “You’ve got the idea. Aaron, make me inarticulate.”

“Make him gauche and gawky,” said Peyton.

“Why not make him rather shy,” said Matt perplexedly.

“Make him as horny as a dog,” said Rex.

“And make him afraid of the dark,” said Eli.

Tom spread his hands and smiled. “Aaron: you have your instructions.”

Ten minutes later, after Tom had inhaled, sucked, and sniffed various occult compounds, Aaron brushed himself down and regained the dining table alcove. He looked around the room. “That about does it,” he said.

Kyler sat tight in his chair until the very last moment. Couples were dispersing in the direction of the locker rooms. Peyton, once revived, had gaggingly swallowed his calmant and was being led by Matt from the room. Derek had gone up, muscularly alone; Eli had followed Rex and Matt from the room. Tom remained in his seat, his features fossilized in a blocked daze, then sloped off.

“Hey. Aaron.”

“Oh yeah. Kyler.”

Kyler left his chair, hoisted himself into the room and went nearer to Aaron, nearer and nearer until he could lift himself up onto the bench opposite him.

“Hey there,” said Aaron, looking over the lid of his box. “What can I do for you?”

“Make me tall,” said Kyler. “Make me tall, make me tall, make me tall.”