I settle for a radio station that’s currently playing a Tom Waits track. That man has so much gravel in his voice that, if he coughed, you could build a road with the contents of his phlegm.

There was a ringing in his ears, like a dead phone line that he couldn’t hang up on.

Dell had left the army and taken the discipline home with him. I’d left the theatre world and taken the whisky sodas home with me.