Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

While waiting for the librarian, the narrator cooks, drinks a beer, and listens to records. When the librarian arrives, she is impressed with his cooking, and he offers to share his meal with her. She eats a huge amount of food and explains that she has gastric dilation, which allows her to stay thin. After dessert, they become intimate, but the narrator—thinking about the amount of food she ate—cannot get an erection. She is kind and comforts him and suggests that being stressed and overworked caused his impotence. He thinks it might be the recent unusual events that caused his impotence. They talk about the last time he had sex with a call girl as they cuddle.

While she makes vodka tonics naked, he puts on a record. They chat about their ages, and she asks if he’s a baseball player because she thinks he looks familiar. When the librarian asks about his knife, the narrator says he’s involved in protecting data. They turn their attention to the books about unicorns she brought over. He asks her to read aloud. First, she notes the books are by Cooper and Borges, who offer contrasting opinions on the fantasy and potential reality of unicorns.