Taipei

6

Paul was in Bobst Library’s first basement floor, seated at a computer, becoming increasingly, “neurotically,” he knew, fixated on his aversion toward Erin’s red backpack, on the possibility that she would have it with her when he went upstairs, in fifteen minutes, to meet her and that, in its presence, he would feel upset. He hadn’t seen her in three weeks, since a few days after returning from Taiwan, when she returned to Baltimore, where a drunk driver had repeatedly rammed her mother’s car, breaking her mother’s hip and badly injuring Erin’s face, which the hospital had said would heal, without scarring, in four months. Erin was wearing large, black-rimmed glasses — to block her face, she said, and they hugged.

“Sorry,” said Erin with a blank expression.

“About what?” said Paul, aware he’d felt only self-conscious when he noticed the red backpack, in his vision like a dot on a screen during an optometrist’s exam.

“Face,” said Erin. “My face.”

“You look good, don’t worry.”

They walked holding hands toward Union Square, ten blocks north. Paul sometimes looked away, so Erin wouldn’t see his depressed expression. He’d begun to worry, some days, for hours at a time, that he was permanently losing interest in Erin, despite earnestly wanting, he felt, the opposite, if that were possible. “You have the red backpack,” he said grinning slightly, with some confusion.

“I do,” said Erin in a tired voice.

Paul sustained his grin tensely.

“What do you feel about that?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul looking away.

“I know you don’t like it.”

“It’s. . just,” said Paul.

“I’ll buy a new one tomorrow.”

“No,” said Paul quietly.

“I have a gift card.”

“I thought your mom was buying you one for Christmas.”

“So did I,” said Erin.

On his mattress, on their sides, holding Erin from behind, Paul thought he wouldn’t end the relationship now, or at any time while Erin’s face, which after two and a half weeks looked like it had been recently stung by eight to twelve bees, was still healing, even if he knew he wanted to, which he didn’t.

But he wouldn’t not end the relationship now, if he knew he wanted to, because it would be pitying and misleading, which Erin wouldn’t want, based on what he knew, but maybe she wouldn’t care, if she didn’t know, which she wouldn’t. Paul thought that he would stop thinking about himself and focus on Erin, but instead, almost reflexively, as a method of therapy, began thinking about suicide, then became aware of himself, a few minutes later, earnestly considering — or maybe only imagining — trying to convince Erin that they should commit suicide together. After an initial, default “open-mindedness” they could easily become fixated, then would want to do it quickly, while it made sense. They would find information on the internet and hurry to a subway station, or wherever, collaborating intimately again, looking out at the world from a new and shared perspective. Paul began to feel, in a way he hadn’t before, like he comprehended double suicide — the free and mysterious activity of it, like a roller coaster descending only into darkness, but accessible from anywhere, on the theme park of Earth, always open.

He sensed his vicinity to a worldview — or a temporary configuration of preferences, two or three ideas introduced to a mood — in which double suicide would be as difficult, as illogical, to resist as a new sushi restaurant to a couple that likes sushi and trying new restaurants. He felt scared, and to distance himself from what he might accidentally engage in, or be absorbed by, in a moment of inattention or daydreaming, he opened his eyes and leveraged himself and looked over Erin’s shoulder with an extremely troubled expression. To his surprise — and self-consciously private confusion, relocated immediately away from the front of the face, to study later — she looked serene and was smiling a little, it seemed.

• • •

Three weeks later they were seated in Sunshine Cinema — at a showing of Somewhere that would begin in five minutes — and had ingested Xanax, which hadn’t taken effect, when Paul, staring at the screen, said in a monotone that he wanted to talk about their relationship. Immediately, in a sort of rush, which indicated to Paul that she wished she had said it first, an otherwise unfazed Erin said she also wanted to talk about their relationship. Paul said he felt bad about it, but didn’t know what to do, or what else to say. Erin said she felt the same. They talked, staring at the screen, during previews — mostly reiterating that they felt bad, didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what else to say — and stopped, when the movie began, without resolution.

At some point, the past two or three weeks, Paul had begun to imaginarily hear Erin quietly sobbing — whenever she was in a bathroom with the sink on, and sometimes when in bed, beside him — in a manner as if earnestly trying to suppress uncontrollable crying, not like she was crying for attention, or allowing herself to cry. He would concentrate on discerning if the crying was real, and would become convinced, to a large degree, every time, that it was, despite learning, every time — seeing, to his consistent surprise, a friendly expression mostly — that it was not.

Paul became aware of himself staring, “transfixed,” at the center of the screen, with increasing intensity and no thoughts. He focused on resisting whatever force was preventing him from moving his head or neck or eyeballs until finally — suddenly, it seemed — he calmly turned his head a little and asked if Erin was bored.

“I don’t know. Are you?”

“I can’t tell,” said Paul. “Are you?”

“Maybe a little. Do you want to go?”

“Yeah,” said Paul, and slowly stood.

• • •

On the L train Paul held Erin in a way that her head and upper body were on his lap, but her legs remained as if she were sitting upright, aware he was doing this — was holding her head to his lap — to mitigate pressures to talk to, or look at, each other. Erin sat up, at some point, and Paul began to speak, in vague continuation of their conversation before the movie, slowly and mostly incomprehensibly, unsure what he was trying to say. Gradually, by focusing on what he’d already said, in the past ten to twenty seconds, he learned that he seemed to be trying to convey that both he and Erin were depressed, which he realized they both already knew. He only felt motivated to say anything at all because he was on Xanax, he knew, and remembered he had Ambien in his pocket and shared one, then another, with Erin, who had sat up, then became aware of himself trying to passive-aggressively convey something by directly saying he wanted to feel pressured to concurrently be a depressed writer and fashion model.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Erin.

“I just feel. . depressed,” said Paul, and weakly grinned.

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel less depressed?”

“I don’t think so,” said Paul. “You’re depressed.”

“What can I do, at this point, to help our relationship?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul feeling that he was more expressing himself than answering a question, and they got off the train.

“Anything at all,” said Erin in a hollow voice.

“I don’t want to tell anyone what to do,” said Paul staring ahead.

“You wouldn’t be. You’d just be answering my question.”

• • •

In Sel De Mer, a seafood restaurant four blocks from Paul’s apartment, seated at the bar, Erin asked if Paul wanted more Xanax and he said “shouldn’t we not ‘go overboard’?”

“What do you mean?”

“We had Ambien and Xanax.”

Erin appeared unresponsive.

“Never mind,” said Paul. “Yes. I want more.” After sharing 2mg Xanax, then ordering, he absently ate all the free bread and butter, and they sat staring ahead, not speaking or moving, until Erin said she felt weird.

“Me too. I don’t know what to say.”

“Let’s just stop fighting,” said Erin.

“Okay,” said Paul.

“Okay,” said Erin after a few seconds.

“Do you want more Xanax? I don’t feel that much.”

“Yeah,” said Erin, and they shared 2mg Xanax.

When Paul’s salad and clam chowder arrived he moved something fried from the salad, with a feeling of efficacy, into the soup, then ate it with a spoon. His steamed lobster with fries and Erin’s broiled monkfish with mesclun salad arrived. He ate his fries using all his butter and ketchup and, at her offer, most of Erin’s butter. “I feel better,” he murmured.

“What?”

“I feel better, due to Xanax, I think. How do you feel?”

“I don’t know,” said Erin. “Okay, I guess.”

At Paul’s apartment they drank green juice and showered, then performed oral sex on each other, showered again, turned off the light to sleep. Paul said they should be on Xanax all the time. Erin said “we’re probably ideal candidates for Xanax prescriptions.”

“I’m sure that we are,” said Paul, and went to the bathroom with his MacBook and, seated on the toilet, looked at lobsters’ Wikipedia page. He typed “immortal animals” in Google and clicked “The Only Immortal Animal on Earth” and saw a jellyfish on a website that looked like it was made in the late ’90s. He copied a sentence, a few minutes later, from Taipei Metro’s Wikipedia page—“The growing traffic problems of the time, compounded by road closures due to TRTS construction led to what became popularly known as the ‘Dark Age of Taipei Traffic”—and emailed it to Erin.

Paul entered his room carrying his open MacBook. “This is what you ate,” he said showing Erin a photo, captioned “a monkfish in a market,” of a glistening, black, mound-shaped mass — grotesque in a melancholy, head-dominated, almost whimsical manner — and she laughed a little.

Ten days later they were on Erin’s bed in Baltimore, around 3:45 a.m., watching a Japanese movie about a woman who tortures and murders men. The past two nights they’d ingested large doses of MDMA and low-to-medium doses of Percocet, Adderall, Xanax and today they’d only used a little Adder-all. Paul began to sometimes leverage himself above Erin, who would roll onto her back, or remain on her side, loosely enclosed by Paul’s arms to either side, as he stared vertically down at her with fixed, impractical, “scary” expressions.

Erin laughed and, the first two times, complimented his effort, then told him to stop, after which he did it again, and thought he wouldn’t anymore, then did again, five minutes later, on an impulse, almost uncontrollably — hovering low, with bent elbows, feeling both insane and, in the private room behind the one-way mirror of his exaggeratedly happy expression, like an experimental psychologist — and she began crying in a helpless and cowering manner, which Paul, to some degree, thought was feigned, so remained motionless, for two seconds, during which Erin’s face appeared unrecognizable, like the irreducible somethingness of her, in the form of a coded overlay, or invisible mask, had abruptly left, revealing the frightening activity — the arbitrarily reconfiguring, look-less chaos — of a personless face. Paul hugged her so she couldn’t see his face and repeatedly said he was sorry and variations of “it’s me” and “it’s okay.” Erin’s eyes appeared strangely collapsed beyond closure, like rubber bands overlapping themselves, for a few seconds, after she stopped crying. “It’s just that my car is broken,” she said earnestly. “I can’t get away.”

“I would have stopped if I knew you were this scared,” said Paul, confused by what she’d been thinking to have imagined escaping in a car.

“You should have stopped when I said stop.”

“But people always say to stop. And you were laughing.”

“I told you to stop,” said Erin. “You did other times and I kept going and you liked it.”

“I know,” said Erin, and described how she’d lately felt depressed in a new and scary way, which Paul also had felt lately and described as a sadness-based fear, immune to tone and interpretation, as if not meant for humans — more visceral than sadness, but unlike fear because it decreased heart rate and impaired the senses, causing everything to seem “darker.” Sometimes it was less of a feeling than a realization that maybe, after you died, in the absence of time, without a mechanism for tolerance, or means of communication, you could privately experience a nightmare state for an eternity. More than once, the past few weeks, Paul had wondered — idly, without thinking past hypothesis — if books and movies he viewed as melodramatic might be accurately depicting what, since before his book tour, he now sometimes felt. They diagnosed themselves with “severely depleted serotonin levels,” caused by forty to eighty doses of MDMA the past three to five months. As Erin’s apartment brightened from the morning sun, through sixth-floor windows, they prepared to sleep. Erin stood at a window eating pink tablets that seemed huge—“disk-like,” thought Paul with a blanket covering all but his head.

They looked at each other neutrally.

“I feel like those aren’t good for you,” said Paul.

Erin said a doctor had recommended them and Paul said something implying it was healthier to never listen to doctors.

“How do you know it’s not good for me?”

“You’ll become dependent, to some degree.”

“No, I won’t, I rarely take it,” said Erin.

“You’ll become dependent to a little degree, I’m just saying.”

“Did you read about that somewhere?”

“Not specifically,” said Paul.

“How do you know, then?”

“Based on what I know, from things I’ve read and experienced, about tolerance, I think your body will be less able to produce something each time you use those.”

“That’s not how everything works,” said Erin.

“I’m not trying to argue with you, based on what I know,” said Paul, aware it was funny to qualify “I’m not trying to argue with you” with “based on what I know,” but not feeling humored. He was standing, around twenty minutes later — and had bought a ticket with his iPhone for a bus leaving in an hour — looking at Erin, sitting on her bed facing away. They were both crying a little. It was below freezing and gusty outside, but Paul declined Erin’s offer of a jacket and multiple offers to drive him to the bus stop — on an unsheltered bridge — and said bye and self-consciously left.

• • •

In early May, more than two months later, Paul was outside Bobst Library waiting for Peanut — to buy drugs for the next three days, when he and Erin would be in Pittsburgh, for a reading, then in Calvin’s mansion for two nights — when he saw Juan walking past and asked what he was doing. Juan said he was buying a Clif Bar and going to the gym and asked what Paul was doing.

“I’m meeting someone to buy drugs.”

“What drugs are you buying?”

Peanut was approaching on the sidewalk.

“I’ll tell you after, he’s there, he probably won’t want to see you,” said Paul remembering once when he and Erin got in Peanut’s car and Peanut became very still a few seconds before quietly saying “yo,” and that he’d expected one person.

“I didn’t know you was a writer,” said Peanut.

“Yeah,” said Paul.

“What books you’ve written?”

“Like five books,” said Paul.

“A book’s a book,” said Peanut, and Paul got in his car. The middle-aged woman in the driver’s seat was wearing a baseball cap. Paul wasn’t sure if she’d worn it every other time or no other time. Paul asked if Peanut had mushrooms. “No,” said Peanut. “But I’m working on that for you.”

“What else do you have on you?”

“On me? I’ve got a bundle of dope.”

Paul, walking toward Think Coffee, where Erin was working on writing, told Juan he bought Ketamine, MDMA, Xanax. Juan said when he tried Ketamine he felt like he could feel the solar system flying through space and that he had been on his bed and had pointed the top of his head in the same direction. Paul said he also bought heroin and Juan said he knew people when he was in high school (in Kansas, where he had been arrested for selling marijuana, Paul uncertainly knew) who used heroin and one had died.

“What do you mean?” said Paul vaguely.

“I think he died,” said Juan, and they slowed to a kind of loitering, as a policeman, behind them, walked past. They stood in place, then continued walking.

“When did they die?”

“I’m not really sure,” said Juan.

“He died,” said Paul grinning. “How?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did he die?”

“I don’t know. I just know he died.”

In the morning, while driving, Paul listened to music through earphones and photographed Erin — asleep with her head, against the passenger window, cushioned by the fluffy, patchwork, faded blanket loosely wrapping all but her face, like an oversize astronaut suit with no visor — around ten times with his iPhone. In Baltimore a few days ago she had been drinking tequila alone while cleaning her apartment — she was moving into her father’s small house, in which a middle-aged couple rented a room — and later while driving had been stopped by the police. Her mother had screamed at her in an out-of-control manner — for the first time in six years — and her father, somewhat unexpectedly, had gone into “nice mode.” Paul remembered a night, eating dinner with Michelle in her mother’s house, when he had said he felt depressed. Michelle had gone upstairs silently — the house had thick, soft carpeting everywhere, even on the stairs, so that people sometimes appeared or disappeared without warning — and cried on her bed. Paul was surprised he’d forgotten that night, and emailed himself with his iPhone—

Remembered being depressed at dinner w Michelle in empty house

While driving to Pittsburgh w Erin asleep

Typed on iPhone in Gmail w right hand

Listening to P. S. Eliot

Left hand on steering wheel

— then vaguely remembered another time when he had remembered the same dinner and had also felt surprised that he’d forgotten.

Paul and Erin were both upset — their default, while sober, at this point — when they arrived in Pittsburgh and each ingested 2mg Xanax. Paul, on a sidewalk outside Erin’s car, watched Calvin and Maggie, both grinning, as they approached and hid behind a dumpster, then walked to Paul, who had a depressed expression, which he didn’t attempt to hide or mollify.

“Hi,” said Calvin after a few seconds.

“We should go to Whole Foods,” said Paul.

“Is there a Whole Foods here?” said Maggie.

“Yes, I’ve been there like ten times,” said Paul peripherally aware of Erin exiting her car. “This is where my ex-girlfriend lived. Michelle.” He looked at Calvin and Maggie, unsure if they knew of Michelle. In Whole Foods he walked aimlessly at a quick, undeviating pace, with a sensation of haunting the location. He ladled clam chowder into the largest size soup container, chose a baguette, stood in line.

• • •

After the reading, which was on the second floor of a bar, Paul stood in a shadowy room, at a billiards table, eating his baguette and soup. He said “we should have an orgy tonight” to Calvin, who seemed hesitant but curious. Maggie entered the room and stood with them and Paul said “we should have an orgy tonight.”

“Yeah, seems good,” said Maggie in an uncharacteristic monotone.

“But we should film it,” said Paul.

“No, I don’t know,” said Maggie with unfocused eyes.

“Once we’re on MDMA we won’t care,” said Paul. “About anything.”

“Maggie’s seventeen,” said Calvin grinning weakly.

“That’s not underage. We can black out her face.”

“I’m not doing that,” said Maggie.

“It’s not worth doing at all if it’s not filmed,” said Paul.

“I don’t want to be filmed,” said Maggie.

“She doesn’t want to be filmed,” said Calvin.

Erin entered the room and began playing catch with Maggie with a billiards ball. Paul sat on a stack of ten to fifteen chairs and continued eating his baguette and soup, feeling distantly like he was avoiding something that would eventually end his life, except it wasn’t avoidable and when it did end his life he wouldn’t know, because he wouldn’t know anything.

“Should we switch cars, on the drive back?” said Calvin. “Like, Paul and Maggie in Maggie’s car, me and Erin in Erin’s car?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul.

“Someone else decide, I’m going to my car to get my sandwich,” said Maggie, and went downstairs. Erin was cleaning a stain on the billiards table, it seemed, at the edge of Paul’s peripheral vision. Paul went downstairs, where he sat alone in a booth and texted Maggie, asking what kind of sandwich she was eating.

At a red light, around half an hour later, Paul threw a clementine at Erin’s car, which was ahead. The light turned green and the clementine missed Erin’s moving car. Paul got back in Maggie’s car, said he wondered what Calvin and Erin were talking about. “I feel sleepy from the food and Percocet,” he said around ten minutes later.

“I like sleeping when I’m cold rather than when I’m warm.”

“Me too,” said Paul. “Are you going to be hungry tonight?”

“Yeah,” said Maggie after a pause.

“I kind of want to eat spaghetti,” said Paul, and laughed a little. “Or something.”

“I’ll make spaghetti,” said Maggie. “No, I don’t want to eat spaghetti,” said Paul. “Oh, I thought you wanted to eat spaghetti.”

“I don’t know,” said Paul quickly, and a few minutes later Maggie said her brother turned 4 recently and would say things like “my three-year-old self hates cucumbers” but wouldn’t talk about his two-year-old or one-year-old self, which Maggie thought was interesting and wanted to ask why, but kept forgetting.

At Calvin’s house everyone ingested more Percocet and Xanax and went in the basement, where Maggie and Calvin each ate a bowl of cereal and Paul, ignoring everyone, to a large degree, talked to Charles on Gmail chat, eventually eating three bowls of cereal. In bed, around 1:30 a.m., Erin asked what Paul and Charles had talked about.

“Nothing,” said Paul automatically. “We just talked about feeling depressed.”

“What else did you talk about?”

“I don’t remember,” said Paul.

“Try to,” said Erin.

“You can just read it tomorrow.”

“Can I read it now?”

“Just read it tomorrow,” said Paul.

“Why can’t I read it now?”

“Okay,” said Paul, and opened his MacBook.

He woke, on his back, to Calvin looking at him from the doorway. He asked if Calvin had used any drugs today. Calvin said he hadn’t, and they looked at each other.

“You haven’t?” said Paul. “Today?”

“Well, a Percocet, when I woke up.”

“When you woke up,” said Paul in a monotone.

“Oh yeah — your alarm is going off,” said Calvin to Erin. “That’s what I came here, to tell you.”

“Oh, damn,” said Erin, and left the room.

“Are. . you and Erin. . having problems?”

“No,” said Paul, and laughed a little.

Calvin appeared tired, slightly anxious.

“I mean. . no,” said Paul looking at the ceiling. “No.”

“I’m going to my room,” said Calvin after a few seconds.

When Erin returned, five minutes later, Paul asked where she’d been.

“In the bathroom,” she said. “Where were you?”

“What do you mean? I’ve been right here.”

“I was in the bathroom. Sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“What do you mean ‘where were you?’ I was here when you left.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I was trying to make a joke. It was. . ‘in bad taste,’ I guess.”

“Don’t apologize about that,” said Paul.

After a few seconds Erin rolled over. “I misinterpreted what you said,” she said facing away. “I don’t want to do that in the future.”

“Stop apologizing,” said Paul.

“I’m not apologizing,” said Erin.

“Okay. Just stop talking about it.”

Erin went in the bathroom attached to the guest room, and when the shower turned on Paul immediately heard a quiet, soporific crying like something from nature. He saw Calvin and Maggie jogging into the room and covered himself with a blanket and they jumped on the bed, then repeatedly in place.

In Calvin’s SUV, that night, on the way to Target to buy hair dye, because Calvin wanted to dye and cut his hair “really weird,” and Maggie had earnestly said “I think I want to color my face too,” Erin asked if anyone wanted Xanax; everyone did, in different amounts, which she apportioned. To her right, gently isolated in a one-person seat, holding half a Xanax bar, which was guaranteed to have an effect on him within forty minutes, Paul felt a quaintly affecting comfort and a self-conscious, fleeting urge to ask someone a question or say something nice to someone.

He thought of how, from elementary through high school, if a girl had been nice to him at school or if he got a valuable baseball or Magic: The Gathering card or if he accomplished something in a video or computer game — if for whatever reason he felt significantly, temporarily happier — he would get an urge to talk to his mother and sometimes would go find her, at her makeup station in her bathroom, or outside watering plants, then reveal something about his life or ask her a question about her life, knowing he was making her happy, for a few minutes, before running back to the TV, Nintendo, or computer. Sometimes, half mock scolding, mostly as an amused observation of human nature (she’d also say she recognized the behavior in herself, that she was the same way, with certain people), Paul’s mother would tell Paul, who almost always answered her questions, her attempts at conversation, with “I don’t know” in a kind of vocal cursive, without disconnected syllables, that he shouldn’t only talk to her — to his “poor mother,” she’d say — when he felt like talking.

Gradually, after being the target a few times of a similar capriciousness, which he discerned as default behavior for most people, and not liking it, Paul learned to not be more generous or enthusiastic or attentive than he could sustain regardless of his mood and to not talk to people if his only reason to was because he felt lonely or bored.

In college, junior and senior year, when he’d deliberately remained friendless — after his first relationship ended — to focus on writing what became his first book, he would force himself to email his mother (his only regular communication, those two years, once every two to four days) even when he felt depressed and unmotivated. He would always feel better after emailing, knowing his mother would be happy and that, by mastering some part of himself, he’d successfully felt less depressed without bothering, impeding — or otherwise being a distraction in — anyone’s life.

Target was closed for an unknown reason. Paul was quiet during the ten-minute drive back to Calvin’s mansion, dimly remembering once sitting close with Erin in another back-seat, also at night, holding cups of hot tea for warmth. His memories had increasingly occurred to him without context, outside of linear time, like single poems on sheets of computer paper, instead of pages from a book with the page number and book title on top.

They used all their MDMA in Calvin’s basement while eating cake, ham, salad, cookies — the first time Paul had eaten food for comfort while on MDMA — then went upstairs to Calvin’s room, where Calvin and Maggie drank beer, which Paul and Erin, who had eaten only a little food, declined. Paul began recording, at some point, with his MacBook. “Isn’t it a thing?” he said after ingesting Codeine and Flexeril. “That people warn against? Combining drugs.”

“Yeah,” said Calvin, and laughed.

“I don’t think that’s true,” said Erin shyly.

“I’m on like eight things now,” said Paul.

Calvin asked if Erin wanted to smoke marijuana and she asked if Paul would be okay with that and Paul said yes, thinking he didn’t like that she had asked. While Erin and Calvin smoked in the bathroom, with the door closed so Calvin’s parents wouldn’t smell it, Paul and Maggie created a GIF of a baseball cap moving around on their heads. Maggie, when Paul said he wanted to smoke marijuana, said he shouldn’t because of his lung collapse history. Paul began coughing nonstop after smoking and repeatedly said his chest burned and fell, half deliberately, to the floor, grinning in a stereotypically marijuana-induced manner, he could feel, as he tried, with his MacBook, to find information on the internet about his situation.

“I feel like I’m unsarcastically viewing this as a major ordeal,” said Calvin.

“I’m just trying to Google ‘burned lung,’ I’m not doing anything to indicate what you said,” said Paul in an agitated voice while grinning. “I’m just idly looking up ‘burned lung’ variations on the internet.”

“I was also viewing this as major until Paul just said that,” said Erin.

Paul lay facedown, at some point, on one of the two beds in the room and heard Calvin say “what if he’s dead?” and imagined Erin shrugging. When he woke, four hours later, on his side, Erin was holding him from behind.

They spoke once — at a rest stop, when Paul said it was his turn to drive and Erin said she was okay with continuing — during the eight-hour drive to Brooklyn, arriving around midnight and sleeping until late in the afternoon, when Erin said she was buying groceries from LifeThyme and driving back to Baltimore. Paul asked if she wanted to “stay and eat dinner on Xanax” before leaving.

At Sel De Mer, that night, Erin said Paul had been ignoring her all weekend and that she felt depressed. Paul said he’d focused on doing what he wanted, on talking to Charles, instead of complaining that he was unhappy. Erin said Paul did complain, to Charles.

“I don’t remembering complaining to him,” said Paul.

“You said you don’t feel happy around me,” said Erin.

“I said I don’t feel happy no matter what. I also said I don’t feel interested in anyone except you.”

“You said you felt interested in other girls sexually.”

“That isn’t complaining,” said Paul. “We talked about a lot of things.” Charles had seemed to be having the same “relationship problems” with his girlfriend as before Mexico and had said he was planning a similar, solitary trip to Asia. Paul had suggested Charles write a novel called Mexico, plotted around his problems with Jehan, who was still in Mexico but had been active on the internet, regularly writing on Charles’ Facebook wall and, unless it had been a different Jehan, adding Paul on Goodreads.

• • •

After dinner, in Paul’s room, Erin asked if she was “going home now.” Paul lay unresponsive on his mattress facing away. Erin said she “wanted to buy groceries from LifeThyme before leaving.” Paul rolled onto his back and, with only the top half of his head visible, said “I think it would be better if you didn’t stay tonight” through the muzzle-y screen of his blanket. He felt “completely motionless,” he thought, on his mattress, with his eyes closed, as Erin gathered her belongings. He heard her say “I agree with what you said about how if it doesn’t work out then it doesn’t work out, but I wanted to say that I like knowing you and I hope it works out.”

Without knowing exactly why, but sensing, on some level, that his feeling was mostly vicarious — that he was experiencing what he suspected Erin would experience, in a few seconds, once she discerned his sincere lack of response — Paul felt a sympathetically cringing sensation that he wished Erin hadn’t said what she had said. Mechanically, with the lightness of bones that could move, he stood and hugged her briefly, without looking at her face.

Six hours later, when birds were chirping but it was still dark outside, Paul was sitting on his mattress watching what he’d recorded in Calvin’s room. He noticed that he hadn’t been in Calvin’s room — he didn’t remember where he’d gone, maybe downstairs to the kitchen — for a few minutes, during which Erin had spoken in a louder, more confident voice and openly debated if she wanted a beer. Maggie, Paul saw in the movie, had asked Erin if Paul drank alcohol and Erin had said “sometimes,” then Maggie had asked what kind and Erin had said “beer, and sometimes tequila,” in a subtly, complicatedly different voice like that of a shyer, less friendly version of herself. Hearing this, aware that Erin would normally attribute non-firsthand information, that she’d say she had read about him drinking tequila, Paul began crying a little.

He lay against a pile of blankets and pillows, away from his MacBook, unsure why he felt emotional. Gradually he realized he’d intuited her voice sounded different because she had probably assumed, to some degree, that only she knew — and only she would ever know — of the aberration in her behavior and, while saying “beer, and sometimes tequila,” maybe had distractedly felt an uncommon nearness to herself that Paul, knowing this in secret from her, had also felt.

Two months later, in mid-July, around a week after Paul turned 28, Calvin and Maggie were in Brooklyn for five days to act in a low-budget movie. They were no longer in a relationship. They met Paul and Erin on a Friday night at Sel De Mer, where Erin gave everyone Xanax and Calvin shared a marijuana cookie with everyone and Maggie, who hadn’t eaten meat in two years, ordered lobster. They confirmed to snort heroin in Paul’s room after dinner, then go to the Union Square theater to “group livetweet” whatever movie fit their schedule. They would sit separately during the movie and communicate only through tweets, in service of making the experience “more fun and interesting,” said Paul, who anticipated wanting to be alone in the theater.

At Paul’s apartment Maggie volunteered to help Paul juice fennel, celery, cucumber, lemon while Erin showered and Calvin did something in Paul’s room. Paul, who had been silent most of the night, partly because he and Erin ingested 2mg Xanax each before dinner, asked if Maggie had asked her brother about “the thing,” which he was surprised he remembered.

“Shit. Yeah. I forgot to tell you.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t remember,” said Maggie absently.

“Are you depressed about you and Calvin?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to talk to him. I feel really depressed.”

Paul organized three bags of heroin into four different-size piles — Maggie only wanted a little — while Erin bought tickets for X-Men: First Class at 12:35 a.m. Paul drew lines connecting three names to three lines of heroin and heard Calvin say “I think I just figured out I can be happy no matter what people around me are doing” to what seemed to be himself and earnestly thought “funny” in a monotone with a neutral expression, then snorted his heroin and showered and ingested 15mg Adderall, two Advil, half a marijuana cookie. Paul vomited on the street twice before they got in a taxi with Erin in the front passenger seat and Maggie in the backseat between Paul and Calvin, who was commenting on the taxi’s TV, which was talking about Shaquille O’Neal.

“You should tweet it, stop talking about it,” said Paul, and opened his door at a red light to vomit, but didn’t and received from someone a plastic bag, which he vomited in twice with an overall sensation of disconcern-based serenity. He tweeted “in cab to theater, ‘already’ vomited twice (jk re seeming to imply xmen will make me vomit)” and read a tweet that said “put hand through cab glass to pet Paul as he vomited into a bag, cabdriver looked at me in a sitcom-like way” and said “Erin, you forgot the hashtag” while staring at his own tweet. “I forgot the hashtag also. We’re all just going to keep forgetting it. What’re we going to do?”

“I recommend copy and pasting.” said Erin.

“We’re all just going to keep forgetting it,” said Paul “pessimistically,” he thought, and when he exited the taxi he walked into, instead of onto, the sidewalk and fell stumbling ahead in an uninhibited, loosely controlled, briefly uncontrolled manner reminiscent of childhood, when this partial to complete abandonment of body and/or limb (of rolling like a log on carpet, falling face-first onto beds, being dragged by an arm or both legs through houses or side yard, floating in swimming pools, lying upside down in headstands on sofas) was normal, allowing his unexpected momentum to naturally expend, falling horizontally for an amusingly far length. He imagined continuing forward in a pretending of momentum, transitioning into a jog, disappearing into the distance. He vomited on the street, then turned around and jogged to Maggie, who stood motionless with a preoccupied expression.

“I’m okay,” said Paul. “Where are they? Calvin, Erin.”

“Buying water,” said Maggie.

“How do you feel?”

“Floaty,” said Maggie with a neutral expression. “Good. How do you feel?”

“Good,” said Paul smiling. “I just used too much.”

When they entered the theater the movie had already begun. Paul sat in a stadium-seated area, above and behind everyone else in the front area. After a few minutes he went to Maggie, who was in an isolated seat, on the right side of the theater. Maggie pointed at Erin and Calvin, twenty feet away, talking to each other.

“We agreed to sit separately,” said Maggie.

“I want separately also,” said Paul.

“I feel upset,” said Maggie.

“I’m going to see what’s happening,” said Paul, and crossed an aisle, past five empty seats, to Erin, as Calvin left the theater. Erin said Calvin had wanted to share her phone. Paul said Calvin “should just go charge it for like ten minutes.”

“I know. That’s what I said. He’s doing that now.”

“Calvin went to charge his phone,” said Paul to Maggie, and returned to his seat. He tweeted “someone in my row is snoring #xmenlivetweet” and “kevin bacon had something like 10 hands #xmenlivetweet.” Maggie tweeted she wanted more heroin. Paul tweeted “i can hear someone snoring ~8 seats to my left #xmenlivetweet” and saw Maggie leave the theater and stared absently as Kevin Bacon talked to people. Kevin Bacon walked outside, where it was snowing, then he turned around and talked to the same people as before, who had followed him. Paul tried to remember why Kevin Bacon had gone outside. He read tweets from Maggie that said “feeling lonely #xmenlivetweet” and “i am in the bathroom contemplating chugging my beer,” which had no hashtag. Paul saw that Erin had left the theater. Paul cautiously entered the women’s bathroom, a few minutes later, hearing Maggie’s voice and movement noises from the handicapped stall.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said Paul in a loud, authoritative voice, and the movement noises stopped.

“Yes?” said Erin after a pause.

“It’s me,” said Paul.

“Oh, shit,” said Maggie, and the door opened.

“I was scared,” said Erin, partly in view.

“You’re in the women’s bathroom,” said Maggie.

“Sorry,” said Paul grinning, and left and sat on the carpeted floor near an emergency exit and tweeted “where is everyone. . i’m sitting in darkness near the women’s bathroom #xmenlivetweet” and that he was going to try to scare Erin and Maggie again. He read “just stood up, lost ‘all control’ of left leg and fell into an arcade game, making a loud noise and ‘yelping’ #xmenlivetweet” by Calvin. He read “someone just said ‘we did it!’ while seeming to float in an indoor ‘future area’ #xmenlivetweet” by Erin. He heard Maggie’s voice and walked quickly to her and Erin and thrust his glass bottle of water at them but water didn’t leave the bottle until, as the bottle neared himself, some splashed onto his chin and neck. Calvin was sitting on the floor by the candy machines, smiling calmly at his phone. Erin gave Paul and Maggie tea-tree toothpicks. Paul went in the theater to his seat and tweeted “why is ‘beast’ flying a jet plane. . #xmenlivetweet” and “is this world war 2, i don’t understand anything #xmenlivetweet” and “i’m going to stand to look at who has been snoring loudly for ~15 min. #xmenlivetweet” and “someone seems to be laying across 2 seats sleeping #xmenlivetweet.” He became aware of the tea-tree toothpick’s wiggling, outside his mouth, and of his intensely concentrating expression, as he worked on editing a tweet, a few minutes after credits had begun scrolling down the screen, when the white shape, of Erin in a white dress, in Paul’s peripheral vision, stopped enlarging, indicating an arrival.

In the lobby, by the bathrooms, Paul said he felt nauseated. “I feel,” said Erin, and was quiet for around five seconds. “Never mind.” Paul asked carefully, with vague aversion toward himself, if she usually thought of what to say before speaking, or would start talking without thinking. “I think at least fifty percent of it before talking, I think,” said Erin. “Why?”

Paul said it was annoying sometimes to wait for her to think, and they stopped talking — Calvin and Maggie were ahead, sometimes looking back — until they got on the L train, when Paul apologized for saying it was annoying and said he understood her behavior. Erin quietly said it was okay. Paul asked if she felt okay and she said she did, and asked if Paul did. Maggie jumped in front of them and posed with the sleeping, drooling, middle-aged man in an opposite seat. “I’m okay with everything,” said Paul distractedly, with some confusion, after moving his iPhone into position and photographing only the middle-aged man because Maggie had returned to her seat.

“Are you sure?” said Erin.

“Yeah. I’m okay with everything if you are.”

“I am,” said Erin.

“I feel nauseated,” said Paul a few minutes later. “But I’m okay with everything. If I’m not talking it’s because I’m nauseated.”

“Okay,” said Erin. “Thank you for telling me.”

In the large deli below Harry’s apartment Paul walked away, at one point, from everyone else and, alone in an aisle, turned into a barrier-like display of heavily discounted tomato sauce. None fell, or seemed to have been disturbed, or affected, to any degree, and no one saw. After buying beer, fennel, celery, a plastic bag of apples, three lemons and walking six blocks Paul and Erin sat on a sidewalk waiting for Calvin and Maggie to get their sleeping bags from where they’d been staying.

“You’re really quiet suddenly,” said Erin.

“I’m really nauseated,” said Paul, and rested the weight of his head facedown on his open palms, covering his eyes and cheeks and forehead. It began raining lightly, in a mist, as if onto produce, or probably an air conditioner was dripping condensation. Paul weakly tried to remember what month it was, stopping after a few seconds, and moved his shoulders to indicate he didn’t want to be touched when Erin began rubbing his back.

Maggie was in the bathroom and Paul was sitting cross-legged on his mattress, around half an hour later, absently reading descriptions of mutants on X-Men: First Class’s Wikipedia page—“scientist who is transformed into a frightening-looking mutant in an effort to cure himself, but is kind at heart”—when Calvin asked if “anyone” wanted to sit with him on the front stoop while he smoked.

“Me. I will,” said Erin, who had been drying her hair with a towel after showering, and Paul saw her looking at herself in the wall mirror. He clicked “Kevin Bacon” and looked at the words “Kevin Bacon (disambiguation)” without thinking anything for a vague amount of time, until Maggie entered the room, when he stood and went in the bathroom and heard Erin say “actually, I’ll have a beer” and Calvin say “really?” and “cool.” The thick carpet of the bathmat, folded like a soft taco, was in the bathtub, sopping and heavy. Paul thought with some confusion that Maggie must’ve put it there, maybe for slippage prevention. While showering he thought about what he’d done during the filming, last year, August to December, of X-Men: First Class: hid in his room, gone on a book tour, gotten married, visited his parents. He entered his room wearing boxer shorts — Maggie was sitting in a far corner looking at her MacBook with a serious expression — and turned around and put on a shirt, sat on his mattress, placed his MacBook on his lap, stared at the words “Bacon in 2007” with slightly unfocused eyes. Maggie said she had a stomachache and moved onto the mattress asking if Paul wanted beer, which she held toward him and which he mutely held a few seconds before moving it near Maggie, who drank some and put it on the floor and resettled herself on the mattress with the sides of their knees touching.

“Calvin and Erin have been gone so long,” said Paul.

“Maybe they’re watching the sunrise,” said Maggie.

“I don’t think you can see it from here.”

“Maybe they went somewhere.”

“I don’t think you can see it from anywhere near here.”

“I don’t know where they are,” said Maggie.

“Do you feel depressed still?”

“Yeah,” said Maggie.

“Because of you and Calvin?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you end the relationship or him?”

“It was me,” said Maggie. “He didn’t want it to end.” She said she felt depressed because she’d been really close with Calvin, so now something in her life felt missing. Paul asked about the singer, of a punk band he listened to often in high school, who had kissed Maggie, she’d said in an email, in someone’s car after a concert. Maggie said the singer didn’t want to bring her in his hotel room because his friends would think it was weird she was 17 and that he wanted to perform oral sex on her but she didn’t want that and he’d said they could “get naked but not have sex” and Maggie had said she didn’t know what that meant. Then the singer had told intimate secrets about his ex-girlfriend. Paul had idly opened iMovie on his MacBook and they’d been absently looking at it, not recording, as they talked and he accidentally clicked — and quickly closed — one of the movies.

“That might be porn. Erin and I made a porn.”

“What’s that?” said Maggie pointing at “ketamine.”

“A drug we used before going to Urban Outfitters.”

“It seems like you and Erin have a lot of fun together. Is that true?”

Paul said they saw each other once every ten days and usually started “fighting” after one or two days. Maggie asked what they fought about. Paul vaguely remembered when, on a large dose of Xanax, alone one night in his room, he fell on his way to his mattress to sleep — pulling down his high chair and causing his shoulder, he discovered upon waking eleven hours later, to bleed heavily from two places into a dark pile on his mattress — only slightly aware that this was unrelated to Maggie’s question. Paul remembered when he calculated three divided by two as three-fourths regarding an amount of heroin and vomited steadily eight to ten hours, beginning around noon. He and Erin, who’d been resilient, maybe from weeks of Percocet after her car accident, had snorted the miscalculated heroin upon waking and, after riding the L train, he’d begun vomiting — near Union Square on streets and sidewalks, in Pure Food and Wine’s bathroom, while walking thirteen blocks south, in Bobst Library’s bathrooms. When they left the library at night he stopped every ten to fifteen feet to vomit nothing and Erin began expressing a previously suppressed concern, insisting Paul drink water. Paul vomited repeatedly after each sip and sat — and, at one point, briefly, lay — on the sidewalk outside a New York University dorm by Washington Square Park, inaudibly mumbling that he was okay and, when Erin said she wanted to call an ambulance, barely perceptibly shaking his head no with a sensation of reluctantly imparting an ancient wisdom. In his room, an hour later, around 9:30 p.m., Erin wanted Paul, covered by his blanket on his mattress, to drink a glass of water and didn’t think he should be lying with eyes closed because people in his situation died by sleeping. After an increasingly tense exchange culminating with Paul “sarcastically,” he thought, chugging the large glass of water — in a display of functioning that probably seemed unlike that of a dying person — Erin, to some degree spitefully, Paul felt, had said she was driving home to Baltimore and, to Paul’s surprise, had left him to sleep alone.

“Just. . things,” said Paul, and laughed a little.

Maggie was staring at his MacBook’s screen.

“Different things,” said Paul.

“I’m just curious,” said Maggie in a frustrated voice.

“I know,” said Paul staring at the cursor on the screen, repeatedly disappearing and reappearing in the same place.

“Can I watch some of a movie?”

“Yeah,” said Paul. “Which one?”

“Your favorite one. Not the porn.”

Paul clicked a ninety-two-minute movie beginning in his parents’ apartment, when he and Erin had returned for ecstasy because he’d vomited his MDMA. Paul’s mother was talking about the Flip cam she’d bought for Paul’s birthday. Paul clicked near the end of the movie. Erin was describing, in “the voice,” which they hadn’t used in months, how salmonella was harvested, in the residential area behind McDonald’s. In the movie Paul said something inaudible and Erin said “Android? You’re bringing Android into this? Amateur.” Paul clicked elsewhere and the movie showed solid black as Erin said “and here we have the brainchild, really, of this whole operation.” When Paul described his time in Taiwan as “hellish,” a month or two ago, Erin had been surprised, because she’d enjoyed Taiwan, which had surprised Paul, who had cited “overdrive” and their excessive drug use before the trip as why it had, for him, been “hellish.” Descending to McDonald’s first floor, in the movie, Erin looked different than she did now, Paul thought, and for maybe the eighth time in the past month considered that she had subtly denser bones or unseen scar tissue now that her face had fully healed. Paul stopped the movie and the vanished image, of Erin and the Christmas tree, reappeared instantly in his memory, looking similar, being already memory-like, on the screen, from low resolution. Taipei seemed gothic and lunar, in the movies of that night, with the spare activity and structural density of a fully colonized moon that had been abandoned and was being recolonized; its science-fictional qualities seemed less advanced than ancient, haunted, of a future dark age.

Maggie was showing Paul emails from the punk singer, after showing him writing she’d emailed to a magazine, when Erin and Calvin returned. Calvin asked what they were looking at and Maggie, closing her MacBook, said she was showing Paul writing she’d emailed to a magazine.

“You guys are still awake?” said Erin. “What have you guys been doing?”

“What were you guys doing?” said Paul in a quiet monotone, mentally stressing “you.” Erin went in the bathroom and Paul heard the sink turn on and, when she exited, asked if she had smoked cigarettes. She said Calvin had but she hadn’t. Paul removed his contact lenses and washed his face, and said he was going to sleep and lay facing away from Erin, who asked if he’d set his alarm. Paul said he’d set it for 2:30 p.m. (they’d agreed to be extras, in the movie Calvin and Maggie were in, tomorrow at 4:30 p.m.) and Erin asked if he was upset about something.

“No, I want to sleep. I’m putting earplugs in.”

“If you’re upset, tell me now instead of later.”

“I want to sleep,” said Paul.

“You seem upset. Can you tell me why?”

Calvin and Maggie were unrolling their sleeping bags. Paul turned toward Erin, whose expression he couldn’t see without contact lenses, and loudly whispered “I feel upset you went outside for so long without talking to me first and that you kept asking me if I was okay when I told you I felt nauseated and that you keep asking me if I’m upset after I said I wasn’t” and turned away.

“So you are upset,” said Erin after a few seconds.

“I’m nauseated and want to sleep. I’m putting in earplugs.”

Erin put an arm around him, and he stood and turned off the room’s light and lay facing away. After a few minutes Erin squished an arm under his neck, wrapping it around his chest to hug him tightly with both arms. Paul thought of the monk-fish he’d shown her — the light-absorbing mass of it, a silhouette of itself, Wikipedia’s stock image for monkfish — and felt emotional, and committed to not moving, then woke to his alarm. He kept his eyes closed, feigning sleep. He could faintly hear Maggie saying his name. “Paul, your alarm,” said Maggie louder, and touched his arm.

He turned off the alarm and covered his head with his blanket, feeling tense and uncomfortable. He removed his earplugs, went in the bathroom, showered and moved quickly to his MacBook and looked at the internet sitting cross-legged on his bed, facing away from Erin, who was waking, it seemed. Paul could feel his left eyebrow twitching. Erin, after a few minutes, sat and said “has everyone showered?” in a voice that sounded loud and sleepy, as if contented. Paul, who felt an excruciating dread of being spoken to or looked at, was startled by how Erin was calmly, unself-consciously, nonchalantly directing attention toward herself. Paul emailed Erin while she showered and, after she blow-dried her hair, Calvin and Maggie left, saying they’d see Paul and Erin in an hour. Erin sat at the foot of the bed, facing away from Paul who lay on his back with his MacBook against his thighs, and they communicated by email (they’d agreed to type, not talk, whenever one of them, currently Paul, felt unable to speak in a friendly tone) for around fifty minutes, until Erin said “it seems like you don’t care about me” aloud.

“I don’t,” said Paul. “I don’t right now.”

“It seems that way.”

“I know. I don’t care right now.”

They were quiet a few seconds.

“I’m going to Think Coffee,” said Erin, and went in the bathroom, then back in Paul’s room, then into the kitchen and out of the apartment. Paul slept three hours, then texted “how’s Think Coffee.” Erin responded she’d been wandering aimlessly on Xanax and hadn’t gotten there yet. Paul rode the L train to Union Square and walked toward the library, ten blocks south, to meet Erin for dinner, beneath a membranous and vaguely patterned sky like a faded, inconsistently worn red-and-blue blanket lit from the other side.

If it were a blanket, Paul thought, beneath which existed only his imagination, he wouldn’t want to throw it off and be obliterated by the brightness of a child’s bedroom in daytime, or even peek outside, letting in the substrate of another world. Realizing this, as a medium dose of Xanax began taking effect, he felt a kind of safety in being where he was — inside the confines of what, to him, was everything — instead of “out there.”

In Paul’s room, around 3:30 a.m., after ordering a lot of food at Lodge but eating only a little and talking calmly, then working on things a few hours on Adderall, they decided to eat psilocybin mushrooms Paul had bought a few weeks ago from Peanut. The light was off and they were on Paul’s mattress, forty minutes later, when Paul began asking what Erin, who seemed reluctant to answer, was thinking. She stood and turned on the light and asked where the “bag” of mushrooms was and, because she thought she was feeling it more than Paul, fed him the remaining amount and turned off the light.

“We’re choosing to not talk, which itself is a communication, which seems good,” thought Paul holding Erin. “I’ll continue communicating in this manner, by not.” His steady, controlled petting of one of Erin’s vertebra with the cuticle of his right index finger gradually felt like his only method of remaining in concrete reality, where he and Erin, and other people, shared a world. Sometimes, forgetting what he was doing, his finger would slow or stop and he would become aware of a drifting sensation and realize he was being absorbed — from an indiscernible distance, beyond which he wouldn’t know how to return — and, with some urgency, move his body or open his eyes, seeing grid-like overlays on the walls and holograms of graph paper in the air, to interrupt his being taken. The effort became gradually smaller and more unconscious and, as if for something to do, in place of what was now automatic, Paul began to discern his rhythmic petting as a continuous striving to elicit certain information from Erin by responding or not responding to her rhythms, in a cycle whose goal was to produce momentary equilibriums. He felt increasingly attuned to the speed and quality of her breathing and heart rate, until he felt able to instantly discern changes in her physiology, which in entirety began to seem like an inconstant unit of unique, irreducible information (an ever-changing display of only prime numbers) that was continuously expressed and that bypassed the parts of them that allowed for deliberation or perception or intuition, beginning and ending in the only place where they were exactly together, undifferentiated and unknowable, but couldn’t, in their present form, ever reach, like a thing communicating directly with itself, rendering them both irrelevant.

Paul began to sometimes laugh uncontrollably, with his face at the back of Erin’s neck, unsure what was funny. When he saw her frowning, a few minutes later, she burrowed her head against his chest and he said “what are you thinking about?” and she didn’t answer and, in an increasingly incredulous voice, like he mostly wanted to express how amazingly difficult it was to know — sometimes pausing after each word for emphasis — he repeatedly stated the question. “This isn’t what I expected at all,” he heard himself say, at some point, without knowing what he was referencing. He’d obviously wanted something good to happen, but what was happening wasn’t expected, based on what he’d said, therefore it must be bad. He was yawning, so was factually bored of Erin. “I feel like I can’t breathe,” he said, and suddenly stood and felt confused and unreal. He repeatedly fell onto his mattress, which every time seemed much less substantial than expected, dropping his body with increasing force and desperation, then lay on his back, unsatisfied and worried. “Sleeping, waking,” he said frustratedly. “Is there a difference? Am I dead?”

“You’re not dead,” said Erin.

“I think I’m dead,” said Paul distractedly, and covered his face with a blanket. He was thinking of how people say that when you die you experience your last moments for an eternity, when Erin yanked away the blanket and began tickling him and pulling him from the mattress as he giggled and intensely struggled, with confusion and frustration, to hide beneath the blanket. After succeeding, facedown with Erin sitting on his back, he seemed, while hidden, to not be thinking anything, then when he absently shifted to expose his face, to breathe, he believed he was insane. He asked if he was and Erin said no, which proved he was, because if he were he would ask and Erin would say he was not. He would never be sane, now that he was insane, he knew, then moved directly past that conclusion — unable to stop there, or anywhere — and believed again that he was dead and remembered hearing the word “bag” and thought of heroin and said “did we overdose?” He realized he would be alone if he was dead, even if Erin had also died — death would seal them into their own private afterlives — and, in idle correction, quietly said “did I overdose?”

“I just have to deal with it,” he said in reference to being permanently alone, with only his weak projections of Erin and his room — requiring an amount of effort to sustain that was immense and debilitating, which was probably why, he realized, he couldn’t sate his breath, feel comfortable, think coherently — to occupy himself forever. “It’s okay,” he said, to begin some process of consolation, but felt only more despair and a panicked suspicion that he’d barely comprehended the terribleness of his situation. “This will go on for twenty years,” he said vaguely, and stood and slapped his thighs with both hands, then held the bathroom door’s frame with his arms in a V and his head hung down and repeatedly said “oh my god” while thinking “I can’t believe I OD’d” and failing to view his death — the horrible, inexcusable mistake of it — as interestingly absurd or blackly comic or anything except profoundly troubling. He fell facedown on a mound of blankets and pillows and rolled onto his back, suddenly contemplative. “I don’t remember that at all,” he said of the months, or years, when their drug use increased and they began injecting heroin, crudely visualizing a stereotypical montage of downward-spiraling drug use. “I don’t remember. . that. But it must have happened. . I just can’t believe I overdosed.”

“You can’t overdose on mushrooms,” said Erin meekly.

“I forgot we used mushrooms,” said Paul in a curious voice, but didn’t consider the information and immediately forgot again. “I think I am where you were twenty minutes ago, so you need to console me,” he said while thinking “that’s exactly what I would tell a projection to do if I were dead.” He tried to fondly recall a memory of his life, of life generally — he would need to learn to be satisfied with his memories, which was all he had now — and said “kissing is good” and “remember Las Vegas?” He said “Taiwan was good” knowing it hadn’t been, aware he was openly trying to deceive himself, then thought of tracing back his life to determine what caused the sequence of events leading to his overdose. “The book tour. . after the summer. Two trips to Taiwan. Remember Arby’s? In Florida?” He heard Erin say they never went to Florida and realized he was talking to himself while sustaining an imaginary companion and that he wasn’t saying what he was thinking. “Why do I keep thinking about RBIs, runs batted in? And something about Hank Aaron?” Paul believed again, at some point, that he was in the prolonged seconds before death, in which he had the opportunity to return to life — by discerning some code or pattern of connections in his memory, or remembering some of what had happened with a degree of chronology sufficient to re-enter the shape of his life, or sustaining a certain variety of memories in his consciousness long enough to be noticed as living and relocated accordingly. Lying on his back, on his mattress, he uncertainly thought he’d written books to tell people how to reach him, to describe the particular geography of the area of otherworld in which he’d been secluded.

Paul was on his back on his mattress thinking “faces are circles,” and of cutting a face into four parts, as his room slowly brightened with indirect sunlight. Erin held his hand and he stood and went with her to the window and focused on the metaphysical area where he anticipated hearing her voice, wanting to be surprised, or to hear something consoling — apportioned from himself to his projection, to ventriloquize back to himself — about death. Erin was pointing at the sky, asking if Paul saw “that thing”—a pale, logo-like silhouette of antennae, or leafless plant, rising from a sixth-floor roof ’s corner, foregrounding a pink sky. Paul said he did, and that it looked pretty, he felt like a sleepy child willingly distracted from worries about a lost pet by a mother pointing at a star saying “everything will be okay, just focus on the twinkling — that’s where we came from and where we’ll be again, no matter what happens here, yes, I promise.”

He held Erin’s hand and wandered somewhat aimlessly into the bathroom and picked up a tongue scraper. “You bought me this,” he said with dull, unfocused eyes. “I never used it. But I really appreciated it. I liked getting it. I never told you.” He put it down and disinterestedly thought “it’s not going to work,” as his hand idly turned a knob, and was surprised by the rupture and crackling of water, its instantaneous column of binary variations. He moved his hand into the water and was surprised again. “I didn’t expect that. . to feel like that,” he said with a serious expression. “That’s really weird.” Realizing he had no concept of what water felt like until he touched it — cold, grasping, meticulous, aware — he felt self-conscious and said he wanted to pee alone. Sitting on the toilet, with the door closed, Paul realized he felt less discomfort and could breathe easier and that the surface of things was shinier and more dimensional from greater pixilation, all of which he viewed as evidence he was successfully convincing himself — through an increasingly elaborate, skillful, unconscious projection of a reality he would eventually believe he was exploring — that he wasn’t dead. With an eternity to practice, he realized, he would forget everything he had thought or felt while dead, including his current thoughts and feelings; he would only believe, as he once had, that he was alive.

He was startled, entering his room, to see Erin already moving, as if independent of his perception. He briefly discerned her movement as incremental — not continuous, but in frames per second — and, like with insects or large predators, unpredictable and dangerous. He wanted to move backward and close the door and be alone again, in the bathroom, but Erin had already noticed him and, after a pause, distracted by her attention, he reciprocated her approach. They hugged a little, near the center of the room, then he turned around and moved toward the kitchen — dimly aware of the existence of other places, on Earth, where he could go — and was surprised when he heard himself, looking at his feet stepping into black sandals, say that he felt “grateful to be alive.”