Unfortunately, after a few days without his pills, Jones’s grasp on reality had grown tenuous and he drifted, as if on automatic pilot, down into lower Manhattan, where he spent several hours crisscrossing its narrow sidestreets, mesmerized by the flashing lights and shifting street scenes that careened past him like a colorized version of an old newsreel.

At one point he stopped his car in the middle of a busy street, and sat staring at a couple of old bums who were shuffling slowly along pulling twin shopping carts filled with their belongings behind them. They were arguing loudly about something, and every few steps one of them would stop, grab the other’s arm, and begin shouting out fresh accusations. They looked to be in their fifties, the man a troll grown old, his wide dark face topped by a surprisingly dense crop of tangled silver hair. His companion was a tiny woman, with gnarled brown hands and ragged bony arms, her sharp hook of a nose peering suspiciously out from under a gray wool kerchief.

Jones found their alcoholic depravity fascinating, and he inched his car slowly forward, straining to figure out exactly what they were fighting about. Finally the angry blaring of a car horn jarred him out of his reverie. “Ay. What the hellaya doin’? … Ya f**kin’ idiot,” bellowed a fat cabby, his mouth wide open in a grotesque mask of anger and disgust. Startled, Jones turned to face the noise, and suddenly realizing where he was, he gunned the engine and sped off, leaving the old drunks muttering in his wake. He headed due east and then north up the FDR Drive and out of the city.