I just got back from a quick shot in the East, and called from the airport but you weren’t home again. Who are these old crones who answer your telephone? I have a picture of some gout-riddled old slattern on her knees in your hallway, waxing the floor when the phone rings and rising slowly, painfully, resentfully, to answer it and snarl “He ain’t here.” Anyway, I called.

Hunter S. Thompson to Tom Wolfe, February 26, 1968