In the end I gave the money to Hugh and had him buy it. I even tried initiating a pool and offered to throw in a few hundred dollars of my own money, but still no one bit. I saw the portrait at the Portobello Road market in London, and though I petitioned hard for months, nobody bought it for me. 'Oh, not now,' she appeared to be saying. You could see it in her eyes as she turned to face the painter. More interesting was that she seemed aware of it.

I'm not what you'd call a dog person, far from it, but this particular one - a whippet, I think - had alarmingly big nipples, huge, like bolts screwed halfway into her belly. This nineteenth-century portrait of a dog, for example. I've also got ideas in the five-hundred-to-two-thousand-dollar range, though those tend to be more specific. The same goes for a pencil case, which, on the low end, probably costs no more than a doughnut. These are not things I might give to other people, but things that they might give to me: a shoehorn, for instance - always wanted one. The last page is always reserved for phone numbers, and the second to last I use for gift ideas. The model I currently favor is called the Europa, and I pull it out an average of ten times a day, jotting down grocery lists, observations, and little thoughts on how to make money, or torment people. For the past fifteen years or so, I've made it a habit to carry a small notebook in my front pocket.

When you re engulfed in flames