"Well?" said the Captain pugnaciously.
Paresi's hands rose and fell, once. "Just wondering why."
"Why I'm going to get loopin', stoopin' drunk? I'll tell you why, head-shrinker. Because I want to, that's why. Because I like it. I'm doing something I like because I like it. I'm not doing it because of the inversion of this concealed repression as expressed in the involuted feelings my childhood developed in my attitude toward the sex-life of beavers, see, couch-catechizer old boy? I like it and that's why."
"I knew a man who went to bed with old shoes because he liked it," said Paresi coldly.
The Captain drank again and laughed harshly. "Nothing can change you, can it, Nick?"
Paresi looked around him almost fearfully. "I can change," he whispered. "Ives is gone. Give me the bottle."
Something clattered to the deck at the hem of the black curtain.
"'S another hallucination," said the Captain. "Go pick up the hallucination, Nicky-boy."
"Not my hallucination," said Paresi. "Pick it up yourself."
"Sure," said the Captain good-naturedly. He waited while Paresi drank, took back the bottle, tilted it sharply over his mouth. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, exhaled heavily, and went to the blackness across the cabin.