The Chesapeake Hotel, a dusty, brown-brick structure that stood a couple of blocks to the southeast of Baltimore's Penn Station, had a gabled roof, large frosted windows, and few other residents during my month-long stay. Far more common were the whores and their clients—the former skeletal and hollow-eyed, with needle tracks lining their arms and legs; the latter an even more forlorn lot, most seemingly born before God invented dust—who used the rooms by the hour.

He set sail on the thirteenth of February with his unpublished novels and short stories; also diaries, letters, poems, and a seven act play. His intention was to throw it all overboard, without ceremony, and put his writing career out of its misery. He'd never write another word.