The downstairs neighbor has emphysema again. Lamb is hungover and hears him from the balcony. He sits eating a bagel, looking at Amy’s dried plants and her radio, and wincing at the periodic coughs from downstairs. He stares at the dials and contemplates. The speakers are rusted, covered in cigarette ash, spots of paint. She doesn’t take care of things. The neighbor coughs again. The neighbor is dying. Lamb closes his eyes. He looks at the radio. He reaches with his foot and presses a button. The plastic stings his skin. The radio still works. Lamb feels a warm sense of affirmation. Things still work. David Bowie chimes in about a Japanese hairdo. There is interference.

He looks at his foot, then around the balcony. He has the mental image of David Bowie smoking on a New York City sidewalk in 1977, staring at a green puddle, implanting existential irony in the madness of the Cold War. Nobody recognizes David Bowie. This moment of anonymity is strengthening. Lamb wishes he was in a situation where he yearned to be anonymous. The neighbor moves around downstairs. Spits. Lamb pictures his own lungs and capillaries, gummed with tar and paint-thinning compounds. Wonders if he will ever develop emphysema. Or an equally debilitating condition. He rubs his hands together furiously. Feels the friction through his fingertips. He stares at Amy’s radio. Touches his face. Spits. Lamb is eating a bagel because it’s the only thing he can stomach. As he chews, his jaw burns. He thinks his tongue is swelling. David Bowie says something about spiders from Mars. His tongue is not swelling.

Lamb feels malnourished and frozen in the aftermath of an unexpected nuclear disaster. He should eat healthier food. His brain would function more effectively. Like David Bowie’s brain. He wonders what David Bowie’s diet consisted of during The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. David Bowie does not eat bagels. David Bowie dines on cocaine and Bloody Marys, humming slow hypnotic rhythms into cashmere scarves, imagining deranged romantic themes through his glacial alienation in a dialogue with God from a Tokyo rooftop. He does not want to work today. He wishes he had the courage to make a life-altering decision. He is tired and weak. He imagines David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust sitting beside him on the balcony, eating a fucking bagel. Staring at Amy’s radio. Feeling ambivalent towards the present. Listening to the dying neighbor gargling tar and paint-thinning compounds. Himself as David Bowie’s friend. He wishes David Bowie was his roommate instead of Donny. They’d sit on the balcony all day, looking to the radio for emotional clarity, smoking cigarettes, counting butts, aware but unconcerned by the impending threat of emphysema. Of nuclear disasters and death. Lamb would learn to be artistic–he’d gradually become a progressive thinker. David Bowie would employ the Socratic Method to teach Lamb the message of Ziggy Stardust. Of postmodernism and the Die Brucke movement. Lamb thinks about Berlin and feels queasy. He thinks, My brain is not effective. He would be a more productive person if he was raised by his biological mother and not Cynthia. Lamb wonders if David Bowie was raised by his biological mother. If any event in his childhood directly inspired The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. Lamb wonders if he is unhappy. If David Bowie is unhappy.

Lamb bites his bagel. Chews. Looks over the balcony. Feels like an alien. He wants to spit the bagel out. He swallows it and looks at the sky. He feels his pupils squeeze shut. It is quiet. Lamb listens for his neighbor. Nothing. He wonders if his neighbor is dead. Lamb thinks about his father. About Cynthia. Cynthia has no conception of postmodernism. She is not a progressive thinker. He remembers one time when Cynthia came home with a bag of bagels. It was Sunday. She looked happy to be doing something Lamb might appreciate. When Lamb saw the bagels, he pretended to not be happy. Cynthia offered to toast Lamb a bagel.

David Bowie describes the Leper Messiah behind the retro stream of a locomotive purr. Rattling pistons fade in and move across the balcony. There is static. The radio chokes and fizzles. Lamb blames Amy’s irresponsibility for the naturally occurring atmospheric disturbance. He breaks off a piece of his bagel and throws it over the balcony. He imagines pigeons will fly into the alley, eat the piece of bagel and feel nourished. “Enjoy,” he says out loud. He might vomit. He wants to. He makes the decision to never drink again. No. He will never eat bagels the morning after drinking again. He imagines a scenario in which he’d be required to eat bagels, unconsciously manifesting a hypothetical future-life, listing each caveat in his head:

• Marriage to Amy.
• Her opening a bagel joint.
• A neighborhood hotspot.
• The servers won’t like Amy.
• She is irresponsible.
• They’ll tell jokes behind her back.

Lamb smiles. As a person, Amy is happier than him. She is physically smaller and has more energy for life. Lamb thinks it is inevitable that he will marry Amy. In his head, he matches her first name with his last name. He contemplates having kids with Amy and wonders what their offspring might look like. Lamb will be the legal guardian of these children. Amy will be their primary breadwinner. Lamb will be nothing but responsible for raising her offspring. He will give all his money to these children. He will be very poor. He considers this. He cries and continues. He will be forced live on a fixed budget. He will eat bagels everyday.