promising recovery in six weeksBaker drives a hand-hammered, coach-built Cord automobile custom-painted in electric lavender. He wears dark chalk-stripe three-piece suits in winter, white suits and matching shoes in summer. Lilac shirts year-round. He sports a diamond horseshoe stickpin and a watch fob heavy as an anchor chain.
In the leanest years of our history, he doesn’t hide the money he grifts from the sick and the hopeless, he broadcasts it. He brags it. He is loud with it. He is the picture of vulgar American excess.
* * *
“Formula 5” is alcohol, glycerol, carbolic acid, ground watermelon seed, corn silk and clover leaves. It is administered by injection at the site of the cancer —up to seven times a day. Baker stole the recipe from another con man. It does nothing.
Illness is an island. There is no loneliness like sickness. You feel it in these rooms. Not isolation, but
desolation.
* * *
