Adam had known stevedores who played with loaded guns, men who stuck their hands into boxes of scorpions just to snatch at pennies, men who dropped knives between their naked toes, a game that grew progressively easier as the playing field gradually cleared. These violent gambles were meant to lance the boil of a cancer that grew too deep to eradicate—depression, anxiety, numbness. Adam wondered if Elrin was one of those whose torment was soothed by needless risk. The thought stirred a tinge of pity in him.
