You're scared. The bloody world is coming to a bloody end. You know it just as sure as you're sitting here in the warm sun in MacArthur park with the fifth you've bought and are drinking from in a paper bag.
It's close now. You're not sure how close but it's close. The world is coming to an end and you know you can't convince anyone that it is. You feel the way Henny Penny—or was it Chicken Little?—must have felt. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Hell—you're just one more caterwauling messiah in a city of messiahs. Los Angeles, where every man is his own messiah.
Then you know what the trouble is. You've been looking for someone to help you, when what you should have been doing was helping them. Now you realize that you are the one, you are the messiah you've been seeking. It's up to you to lead them out to the city into the wilderness. You drink more and you drink it fast and the more you drink the more a feeling of infinite compassion comes over you for your fellow men.
You can save them. You can do it. You drain about two-thirds of the bottle and then get up and walk toward a man in that uniform of success, a gray flannel suit.
"Wait a minute, friend," you say, shifting the bottle to your left hand so you can take his arm with your right.
"What is it? What do you want?" he says, looking at you as though you're drunk.
"Have you seen the papers today, friend?" you ask.
"Let go of me," he says, pulling away.
"If you have seen them, what are you going to do about it?"
"I'm going home and eat my dinner." He hurries off.