When I heard the news I did what a few thousand other Americans must have: I picked up the phone, and I called B. This is how we recognize death in this country, or at least, this is how I recognize death in my country. That Casio ringtone is the last great requiem.

"So, have you heard?" I ask.

"Hunter S. Thompson is dead. Yes," B answers.

B is a literary device invented by Andy Warhol, who has been dead for years. Now that Thompson is dead, I have only Vonnegut left for my living plagiarism: Once he kicks, I will be strictly a grave-robber.

"How do you feel about it? I'm remiss."

Remiss is a word that means something entirely different from what I think it means.

"I don't know," B answers. "I guess it's unfortunate. I wish he'd left a note, or if he did I wish they'd publish it. I'd just like to know more what this really means."

"Suicide notes are the last place you should look for meaning."

"I know."

Hunter S. Thompson ended his life by shooting himself in the head with a gun. It is one of the messiest and least considerate forms of suicide available to man. It is also one of the most convenient.

"Maybe," B suggests, "maybe he isn't really dead. Maybe he faked it. To increase his book sales, or something."

"You fool," I say. "You have no idea how the literary industry works. That would never work, and he would have known it. Nobody wants to know what a dead man has to say."

"But the Beatles, and all the rappers... Tupac is a bigger sell now than he ever was when he was alive."

"That's music," I explain, "that's a different industry. A whole different thing entirely. Music you listen to, you approach it, you know? The written word is different. Written words are all about getting inside the head of the author, seeing the world through his or her eyes. And no one wants to get inside the head of a dead man. They are afraid of what they might find."

"Like Hamlet?" B asks.

"Exactly."

Hamlet has a famous soliloquy about how fucking rape-attack scary it is to imagine what death and being dead must be like. William Shakespeare wrote it, and William Shakespeare is dead. He had to find out, one way or the other. Poor fuck.

"So no," I continue, "he didn't stage it for sales. If anything he staged it to hurt sales, but that makes no sense because he'd get less money, and that's something no man would ever want to happen."

"No man or woman," B insists. "You should speak with less gender bias."

"Fuck that," I say. "Women have ovaries. I do not presume to know the first thing about what they would or wouldn't want. They are an alien species, and probably hostile."

"True."

Science tells us that the ovary is a nightmare world in which human eggs reside until their presence is needed in the womb. From there, their fate is unknown.

"Hold on," I say. "I have a sore in my mouth. I need to take a pain-killer."

"A sore? What from?"

"I don't know. I bit my cheek, I think, and then it swelled and so I ended up biting it more, and now it's very bad and painful."

"Yes," B says, "I've had that happen. The mouth is very poorly designed is that sense."

"God really didn't think that one through," I say.

"But there is no God," B replies.

"I know. That is why He is the perfect scapegoat."

I go and take my pain-killers. I worry that I am taking too much, because I know that too much will cause liver damage, but fuck it. This sore in my mouth is clearly infected, and will probably kill me before my liver is ever an issue. And then I will have committed suicide, too: I will have bitten myself to death.

"I'm back," I say to B, when I get back.

"Oh, good," B says. "I waited."

"Thank you."

"You know what I was thinking while you were gone?" B asks. "It occurred to me, I don't actually own any of Thomspon's books."

"You're lucky," I say. "I own four or five."

"Lucky?"

"Yes," I say. "It's like I said before, they're terrifying. I picked up my copy of Fear and Loathing earlier, and it was like picking up a firecracker. Those words, you know, they convey the conscious essence. And what I can't decide, is, are they just records of consciousness, you know, or is that consciousness actually real, like a real preserved chunk of it, in chunky book form?"

"I don't follow," B says.

"I guess what I'm worried, I guess what I'm worried is are the books, you know, haunted in some sense?"

B laughs.

"Of course not, silly! Ghosts do not exist!"

B is correct. Ghosts don't exist at all.

"You're right," I say. "What the fuck am I thinking?"

"You're just a case. You can't help it. It's okay. We love that about you."

I'm not sure who the we is that B refers to. B is not even a person, after all, just a literary construct. Could there be more of these literary constructs? And do they really have emotions about me, one way or another?

"See!" B says, reading my mind. "You can't just hear a thing and let it go. Jesus! An author is dead, and this means what in your life? Nothing at all! Hop on the bus and go downtown, look at some pretty girls, and some not-so-pretty girls. You won't talk to any of them, I know, but at least you will have shown your face. At least you will be on record, you know?"

"You're right," I say. "Again, you're right."

"I know," B says. "I know."