PSYCHIC: Do that dope. Learn by example.

JOSH: That's a thought. But still ...

PSYCHIC: Okay, you think I'm attracted to you, right? I make you think that. It's an Afghan thing. That's how we bombed your f.u.c.king country. There's your proof.

Josh studies the psychic for a second then laughs and starts pouring the quote-unquote dope out on this little mirror he always carries around in his pocket just in case.

JOSH: You're good. I mean you're really, really good. Okay, you win. What are you into?

PSYCHIC: I'm into you not knowing what to expect. Okay, I'm into r.i.m.m.i.n.g and fist f.u.c.king. But do that dope first. I like my wh.o.r.es brain-dead.

Josh is already dividing the quote-unquote dope into lines with this razorblade he also carries with him.

JOSH: (distractedly) Sounds good. I mean whatever you said.

PSYCHIC: In Afghanistan, there's very famous canyon called Khakistarikhan. It's the deepest canyon in all the world. When I'm through with you, I'm going to enter your a.s.s in the Khak- istarikan lookalike contest. It's a big event in Islam, and you'll definitely win.

JOSH: (to Mackerel) If you'd ever been fist f.u.c.ked, you'd be so turned on right now.

MACKEREL: No, I wouldn't.

PSYCHIC: (to Mackerel) You should develop your gift. Let me have s.e.x with your dead buddy here. Then I'll lend you a book.

MACKEREL: According to you, I won't have time to read it.

PSYCHIC: That's true, but don't make me laugh. I'll lose my focus. Here, junkie. Use this capitalist prop.

He hands Josh a hundred-dollar bill. Josh rolls the bill into a straw, then leans over and snorts up all the quote-unquote dope.

JOSH: Tell me more about this canyon. I mean more about me.

PSYCHIC: Once a year, a huge prehistoric creature that lives deep in the canyon comes to the surface and does a little dance. He looks exactly like my forearm.

JOSH: Whatever that means. Wow, this is killer heroin. I mean literally. I can feel the legend.

Josh has started to look too relaxed to be around a Middle Easterner in this political climate.

MACKEREL: (to Josh) Don't you see what he's doing? This is how the whole 9/11 bulls.h.i.t happened. He just told you that himself.

PSYCHIC: (to Mackerel) He's beyond you. Besides, you love it.

MACKEREL: That could be true. I'd have to think about it.

PSYCHIC: (to Mackerel) Don't you realize it yet? You're the one who wants a sixteen-year-old corpse. I'm just a nice guy.

MACKEREL: You're wrong.

He points down at the bulge in his blue jeans.

MACKEREL: This hard-on is bulls.h.i.t. I just have this whole thing about overdosing on heroin. You started it. s.e.x is just like whatever. Dying is s.e.x to me.

PSYCHIC: You're too good for this world. As opposed to that corpse or impending corpse over there. You knew him. So you tell me. Dead or not dead?

Mackerel glances at josh and sees an ugly whitish color that has to mean death's in the mix. He starts rubbing his crotch to help counteract the uns.e.xiness of his moral dilemma.

MACKEREL: (somberly) He's history. We're like historians now.

PSYCHIC: Now I'll tell you the truth. I'm not just a psychic. I'm an Al Qaeda operative. He's my mission. It's all about semantics. Do you want to hear the story? It'll curl your toes.

MACKEREL: They already are. Maybe I'm psychic, because I already know what you're going to say.

PSYCHIC: I'm listening.

MACKEREL: If I tell you, you'll lose your hard-on. But you're a stalker. How's that for proof?

PSYCHIC: I love him. That's where our cultural differences get in the way. In my culture, this is love if you're gay. We're not fancy about it. You think we live in caves because we like to live in caves? It's a metaphor. We live together in caves until we find our own caves and fly away. I searched your country coast to coast, and this junkie's a.s.s is mine. Wait'll you see it.

MACKEREL: Like you've seen it.

PSYCHIC: I didn't have to. That's just your literal American thinking. Don't even try to understand it.

MACKEREL: You're big on words and concepts. If I were gay, I'd say G.o.d is s.e.x, and seducing straight boys like me is the prayer. Josh told me his boyfriend had to rob a bank to make him gay. He said before then he was just another guy who couldn't make the football team and turned into a stoner. Maybe he was lying, I don't know. The past isn't my thing. So I question your story. How's that for being psychic?

PSYCHIC: Maybe if I knew myself better, I'd agree. Your freedoms are intimidating. How's that for honesty?

MACKEREL: No offense. All I'm saying is your quest is nothing special. You and him are just p.o.r.n. Death is s.e.x. I mean my death, not his.

PSYCHIC: So I should murder you too? I'm confused.

MACKEREL: No, I'm just saying we should film it. Let's say, hypothetically, I film you doing gay stuff to him. Then we upload the video onto a Web site, and charge guys to watch. They jack off and imagine they're you and all that. Then at the end of the tape we put a little text that says, "Oh, by the way, the boy you just saw getting f.u.c.ked and et cetera was dead, ha ha ha. You're a necrophiliac. Busted." It might be like flying a plane into the World Trade Center, except a lot more profitable for us.

The psychic scrunches up his face in concentration for a moment.

PSYCHIC: (laughing) I wonder who would win in a debate, Bin Laden or you? I'll always wonder that.

MACKEREL: You really need to chill on the Bin Laden thing. I mean if you guys over there in Afghanistan really want to be like the West.

PSYCHIC: I sort of wish he was alive. I mean the) unkie, not Bin Laden. Don't get your hopes up. I just mean I wish he knew how much his a.s.s will change the world. But I'm into S&M, so f.u.c.k him.

MACKEREL: Not to disappoint you, but his a.s.s is kind of hairy. Not that I've seen it. You could shave it, I guess. We do that a lot over here.

PSYCHIC: (angrily) That's so typically nihilistic of your culture.

MACKEREL: Here, I'll show you. It's not a trick. You could do it too, for future reference.

Mackerel tugs on one of the legs of josh's jeans until there's a naked foot of calf, and rubs one finger gently through its modest thicket of blondishbrown hairs.

MACKEREL: See that? That's how you know.

PSYCHIC: I don't believe you. You're just superst.i.tious. I know all about superst.i.tion. When you're poor and live in the desert you think all kinds of crazy s.h.i.t.

MACKEREL: You want to bet? You'll lose, though.

PSYCHIC: (laughing) Sometimes I forget you're only thirteen years old. Sure, I'll bet. What's the wager?

MACKEREL: Okay, if it's hairy, there's no G.o.d. And if it's smooth, there is.

PSYCHIC: How about if it's smooth, you can rim him for a second. It had better be. In Afghanistan, it's a sea of hairy a.s.ses. That's why we're all pedophiles.

MACKEREL: Maybe I'm wrong, but with these calves, it would be a miracle. Anyway, to us a hairy sixteen-year-old a.s.s is exotic. I've never even seen one.

PSYCHIC: Wait, what's the bet again?

MACKEREL: If I'm right, you'll give me enough of that heroin to kill me, and if I'm wrong, there's no G.o.d. But let's just do this f.u.c.king thing and move on to something else that we agree on, like my future.

They lay Josh on his back, grab his blue jeans by the belt loops and yank them down over his knees, dragging a pair of jockey shorts along with them. Then they roll him over ceremoniously.

MACKEREL: Okay, that's weird. It's not only smooth. It's also perfectly shaped if one knows anything about physics. I wasn't just wrong. I'm also gay, or gay for him, or gay for it. I don't know about him yet.

PSYCHIC: Stop apologizing and pray.

He kneels down, spreads Josh's cheeks, and starts licking and chewing dead a.s.s crazily like he's a lion and it's attached to some gazelle.

MACKEREL: FYI, we call that r.i.m.m.i.n.g in the States because we know G.o.d is bulls.h.i.t. But don't stop.

PSYCHIC: That's strange. We call this praying in Afghanistan because we know G.o.d is s.h.i.t. Let me clarify. His s.h.i.t. Or rather guys who look like him's s.h.i.t. You'd qualify.

MACKEREL: That's your f.u.c.ked-up trip. I'm still at the being rimmed stage. s.h.i.t's for grown-ups.

PSYCHIC: Did you ever know this boy Steve? Blond, nineteen, quit school, converted to Islam, joined the Taliban, blah blah blah?

MACKEREL: Why would I? Unless he tried to turn me on to pot once. Read my mind, but keep r.i.m.m.i.n.g him too. Can you do that? We can.

The psychic shuts his eyes and concentrates.

PSYCHIC: That's him. Now read mine.

Mackerel shuts his eyes and concentrates.

MACKEREL: Jesus, I'm so gay. That's Steve Rosenberg, all right. What a great f.u.c.king a.s.s. It makes mine seem like the t.i.tanic.

PSYCHIC: Steve's a.s.s even turned the great Bin Laden gay for an hour. Don't be so hard on yourself. In Afghanistan, Steve's a.s.s is a national icon.

MACKEREL: And I could have had him. I'm an idiot. Tell me everything about Steve's a.s.s, but keep r.i.m.m.i.n.g the dead guy.

PSYCHIC: In Afghanistan, when you want to give a cook the highest compliment there is, you use a phrase. I can't translate it. But it's something like, Thank you for letting Steve sit on my face. Don't quote me.

MACKEREL: Your thoughts are terrorism.

PSYCHIC: Well, this junkie's a.s.s makes Steve's a.s.s taste irrelevant. And it's already cold. Imagine if I hadn't overdosed him. I'm such a rush-to-judgment type.

MACKEREL: Fine, Jesus, then scooch over a little.

He kneels beside the psychic, and starts r.i.m.m.i.n.g josh too. His technique is a lot more romantic.

MACKEREL: Can you believe I've never done this?

PSYCHIC: No.

MACKEREL: I wonder how I'd rate? I mean if my a.s.s was this a.s.s, and you were me or whatever.

PSYCHIC: Some things are too beautiful to know. That's why I've never read Proust.

MACKEREL: So how was Steve compared to Proust?

PSYCHIC: I can only speculate. I'll just say that this writer friend of mine who rimmed Steve is called the Proust of Afghanistan by our literary establishment, such as it is. Before my friend had Steve, he wrote thrillers.

MACKEREL: I want to be rimmed. I mean again. I mean by Bin Laden or you.

PSYCHIC: Like I said.

MACKEREL: You and Steve seem like you were really good friends. But I'm gay so I don't care about friendship anymore. It's lame. r.i.m.m.i.n.g is the truth. Hold his a.s.scrack wider open so I can really eat his hole.

The psychic spreads josh's dead a.s.s cheeks helpfully and leans back to observe.

PSYCHIC: I could watch you do that all day.

MACKEREL: Me too, if I could.

PSYCHIC: By the way, this is jihad, if you care. You guys thought it was those planes. If Bin Laden is astral projecting himself into my body right this second-and if he isn't dead, he is-he'll be seriously digging what we're doing. I'm so going to heaven.

MACKEREL: That's debatable.

PSYCHIC: No, it's not. Anyway, it's been a second.

He knocks Mackerel out of the way, and goes down hard on josh's a.s.s.

MACKEREL: (angrily) Friends don't do that. So we aren't friends. I don't know what to call this, though. We like categories over here.

PSYCHIC: So do we, but our categories are gigantic.

MACKEREL: See, we respect death too much. That's the only category that's gigantic over here. We're not like you.

PSYCHIC: So now you know.

He starts eating josh out even more hungrily than before. The a.s.s starts shaking and rocking side to side and inflating and deflating like lungs.

MACKEREL: I'm bored.