Excerpt from Quicksand by Steve Toltz, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I say, "I'm sick of looking at you and perceiving a smaller, meaner universe."

He laughs and says, "Tough," then starts telling me about the guys he met in hospital, a quadriplegic who risked breaking a rib if he sneezed and had to be on constant vigilance against pollen and pepper and sunshine, another with a malignant melanoma on his spinal cord, and yet another who'd dived into an unseen sandbar and whose fusion of broken vertebrae was now a centimeter off, and how it was both unbearable and heartbreaking to be stuck in the smoking area with these unfortunate bastards who were already doing one-handed wheelies by the time Aldo had only learned to transfer to a toilet seat. I turn my gaze downward, stifle a groan, and write: I can't imagine a sadder thing in the whole world than putting socks and shoes on those useless feet.

"What are you writing now?"

I show him. Anger is not one of Aldo's usual go-to emotions, so I am taken aback when he bangs his fist on his chair's tubular armrest and shouts, "I'll make your publisher pulp it while your daughter watches!"

The bartender leans forward and says, "I said, keep it down," then turns up Van Morrison disagreeably loud.

Aldo holds a stiffened finger in the air. I think: Here we go again. He says, "You know how if we had time travel people would use it to go back short temporal distances to make premonitions and look like big shots?"

"Yeah. And?"

"Never mind. Fuck it," he says and puts on his aviator sunglasses. "I'm going for a ciggie." He wheels himself out onto the balcony, to the sea-rusted railings where gulls are perched and where he goes through half a box of matches lighting his cigarette in the infuriating wind. From a distance, he has the worn yet sleazy handsomeness of a cruise-ship magician. He flicks the half-smoked cigarette at a seagull, narrowly missing it, and shouts back to me, "AS PATRICK'S DADDY ONCE TOLD HIM: IT AIN'T A PROJECTILE IF IT AIN'T AIRBORNE!"

I shout, "WHO'S PATRICK?"

He shouts, "MY CELLMATE!"

The bartender shouts, "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

Aldo gives him the finger, then moves like a storm front inside, toward the handicapped toilets. He rattles the door handle.

The bartender yells, "That one's out of order. Use the downstairs one."

Aldo swivels his chair and gazes down the steep metal staircase.

"You're supposed to have a handicapped toilet."

"It's out of order."

"It's the law!"

"It's out of order."

Aldo takes a slow, deep breath and beckons me over. He turns around and rigidly faces the big window. I stand beside him, looking out at houses nestled in bushland with imbricated terra-cotta roofs and manicured lawns, at gnarled limestone cliffs, surfers carving up the lips of rising waves. He says, "With medical science improving at roughly the same rate as our environmental situation worsens, the most likely scenario is that the world will become uninhabitable at the precise moment the human race becomes immortal."

"So true!" I write that down and say, "This is going to sound gay . . ."

"Say it."

"You are my muse."

"Will you carry me to the toilet?"

"Of course."

He is not light in my arms. I carry him down the stairs and turn on my side to get him into the narrow cubicle. As I bend to gently lower him I can feel my back give out and—I have no choice, it's a split-second decision, pure reflex—I drop Aldo onto the seat. He hits his head on the stainless-steel toilet paper dispenser. In a small, hoarse voice: "My kingdom for an intrathecal morphine pump."

"You've outlived yourself."

"I never wanted anyone to say of me, 'He's breathing on his own now.'?"

"Now do you understand why—"

"You do not have my permission!"

Excerpted from Quicksand by Steve Toltz. Copyright © 2015 by Steve Toltz. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.