Cammed each night out of that safe furrow the bulk of this city's waking each sunrise again set viruously to plowing, what rich soils had he turned, what concentric planets uncovered? What voices overheard, flinders of luminescent gods glimpsed among the wallpaper's stained foliage, candlestubs lit to rotate in the air over him, prefiguring the cigarette he or a friend must fall asleep someday smoking, thus to end among the flaming, secret salts held all those years by the insatiable stuffing of a mattress that could keep vestiges of every nightmare sweat, helpless overflowing bladder, viciously, tearfully consummated wet dream, like the memory bank to a computer of the lost?

"It's the sweetest thing there is," said Lazzaro.
"People fuck with me," he said, "and Jesus Christ are they ever fucking sorry. I laugh like hell. I don't care if it's a guy or a dame. If the President of the Unisted States fucked around with me, I'd fix him good. You should have seen what I did to a dog one time."
"A dog?" said Billy.
"Son of a bitch bit me. So I got me some steak, and I got me the spring out of a clock. I cut the spring up in little pieces. I put points on the ends of the pieces. They were sharp as razor blades. I stuck 'em into the steak- way inside. And I went past were they had the dog tied up. He wanted to bite me again. I said to him, 'Come on, doggie- let's be friends. Let's not be enemies any more. I'm not mad.' He believed me."
"He did?"
"I threw him the steak. He swallowed it down in one big gulp. I waited around for ten minutes." Now Lazzaro's eyes twinkled. "Blood started coming out of his mouth. He started crying, and he rolled on the ground, as though the knives were on the outside of him instead of on the inside of him. Then he tried to bite out his own insides. I laughed, and I said to him, 'You got the right idea now. Tear your own guts out, boy. That's me in there with all those knives.'" So it goes.
"Anybody ever asks you what the sweetest thing in life is-" said Lazzaro, "it's revenge."