The building is maybe twenty years old, but looks five times that. Part of a mini strip mall, mostly glass and partition walls. In winter, accountants and dental nurses freeze to death in these boxes.

Zeb’s is wedged between Snow White’s dry-cleaners and a Brite-Smile. Chemical sandwich. No wonder my doctor friend has his off days, with fumes like that eating his brain. I make sure my appointments are in the mornings, before depression takes hold.

The sign is flipped to Closed when I arrive. Surprising. Usually Kronski’s homeopathic centre is doing a brisk business in powdered crocodile penis capsules by this time. Zeb tells me that the homeopathic bit started out as a front, but now he’s having to file returns.

People are fucked up, Dan, he confided one night at Slotz, down to a film of whiskey in the bottom of his glass. Everyone’s looking for the magic pill. And they don’t give a shit whose horn gets ground to make it.

Wooden blinds stretch across the shop front; reminds me of a schooner deck I worked on in Cobh harbour. Kronski’s Kures reads the decal. This mall is big on misspellings. Two doors down is Close Cutz, and around the back there’s a roomful of Krazy Kidz slugging down Ritalin.

I feel a little irritated. Zeb better not be face down in an empty jacuzzi, sleeping off a bender.

Again.

Last time it cost me two hundred bucks to pay off the madam. I’ve been working up to this session, mentally, running through the scenarios, playing devil’s advocate with myself.

What if the follicles didn’t take? What if I end up scarred? What if I’m a vain asshole who’ll still be ugly after the next operation?

And now that I have myself totally psyched, as my adopted countrymen would say, Zeb Kronski is running late. And when Zeb is running late, he is generally running tanked.