So we get together in this restaurant in the World Trade Center, and Ronnie gives me the bad news about the proposal.
        "No," says Ronnie.
        Just like that. Flat no.
        "Why?" I say.
        Thinking to myself: I need the advance, you bastard!
        "It's just not credible," said Ronnie. "They out the spy? For, like ... what's the word? Pique?"
        "Yeah," I say. "It's refreshing, original."
        "No," says Ronnie. "It's not original. It's nutso. The government doesn't out its own spies. We don't betray our own side, not without, you know, motivation. Someone sells out for a million bucks, something like that."
"But that's what makes this so original," I say. "I've created unique monsters. They've disconnected from ... what can I call it? The protocols of necessity, shall we say. Make sense?"
        "No," says Ronnie. "It doesn't."
        "The smallest thing," I persist. "The smallest thing, they'll set it up so people are killed, tortured, thrown in jail ... they out her, it's headline news, her contacts get rounded up — "
        "Yeah, yeah, sticks in orifices," says Ronnie, impatiently, cutting me off. "That's your problem. You're just wacko. You're just too much into this stuff. I mean, this is one sick fantasy. People getting disappeared, beaten up, deported off to these, these — "
        "Torture camps. The overseas torture camps."
        "Yeah, that. And the bit about the guy with the gunshot wounds ..."
        "That's just how I see it," I protest. "You know my ethos."
        "Yeah, yeah," says Ronnie. "The reality thing. But you gotta accept, this isn't reality, this is just, like I said, just — "
        "My demented imagination."
        "Yeah, that."
        And, five minutes later, Ronnie is gone. Leaving me with the bill for the dead duck and the oyster shells. Alone in the restaurant, looking out at the view of the blue sky and an airplane.