In this chapter, we find out that the narrator is a guest on a local station's talk show. He's there to talk about the upcoming Valentine's Day radio competition, which is being held at the station. The narrator wants to know why the guy is talking like that. He asks the guy if he's actually interested in his listeners, and the guy says that's the way his job is, to scoop up the voices of his listeners. He also says that his listeners are the stars of the show, and that he'd like to know how they feel about scandals, sexual innuendo, and crass jokes that barely fit into the broadcast code. He says that these kinds of jokes have a dark realism about them, because they're trying to get by day-to-day. He then tells the narrator about his sister's brother, who was caught stealing morphine from the pharmacy and then leaking it to a dealer disguised as a visitor. He tells the story of how his sister has been helping him take care of his son.