He also realized that his own stumbling had disappeared. The blink-outs. He hadn’t had one in weeks.
He bought another bottle of bourbon and set it on the desk. A sip or two seemed to align his thinking. During one stretch of mental projection, he fleetingly envisioned a course all the way to the finish — it laid itself out before him like a rock skipping across a pond. Then was gone.
He was able to reconstruct the particulars only long enough to realize that such a route, momentarily discernible as it was, would soon be overwhelmed by calculation. With growing confidence, he moved to his original insight — that the higher dimensions, despite their unseeable complexity, would yield the answer.
This was the correct path, he sensed with finality one night as he walked again on the Emeryville flats, where before him on the dark bay the ships cast their crawling illumination against the night. This was the path on which he would stake his future.
—
HE’D FOUND HIS approach now. He was quite aware of it.
But he could no longer work in the library, the quiet there speeding up his thoughts to where they raced beyond him. He’d taken to working in the coffeehouses instead and even a sandwich shop near his apartment, where the noise buffered his thinking. The brain needed to work at a certain speed. And alone. The parts of him that were Milo Andret needed to go away.
One rainy night, waiting for sleep, he was startled by the phone. 1:23 a.m. He sat up in bed.
“Andret—”
It was Cle. This was ruination.
He couldn’t make out the words. He didn’t want to say anything, but he couldn’t hang up. He set the receiver on the sheet. Now she said nothing at all. The only sound he heard was music. More voices. He forced his own silence. A clock leaf flipped down.
Finally, he said, “What did you want?”
No answer. Behind her, brief voices again through the noise: a party.
“I’m going to hang up now,” he said. “I don’t want to. But I’m going to hang up.”
That he didn’t — that he didn’t set the phone back in the cradle, that he laid it on the pillow instead, beside his ear, where it kept up its whispering — that he didn’t hang it up because he’d had an intuition became a point of comfort to him that would buoy him many years later, when he was stricken all the time with doubt.
Five clock-flips later, she said, clearly enough, “Help.”
—
SHE WAS LIGHT. No weight at all. Running. Her body limp across his chest. A crowd. Voices.
At Durant the squeal of a cop car and a veer from the curb. Now they were in the back, her pale face tilted up. Speeding through the night. The twirling strobe cracking the world.
The steel gurney. The double doors. The gray mask pushed against her mouth.
—
“WHAT’D YOU DO?” he asked when they finally allowed him in. It was the next afternoon. He’d gone home in the early morning and picked flowers outside his apartment with a flashlight. Since daybreak he’d been waiting in the lobby.
A tube ran from her nose.
“Could have been laced,” she said.
“What could have been?”
She looked around. “How do I know?”
“Where’d you get it?”
She nodded off.
“Cle, where’d you get it?”
“Where do you think?”
“What was it?”
“Won’t—” She nodded off again.
“Won’t what?”
He pinched her hand. She looked bleached. The name bracelet on her wrist was stained with either blood or puke. An IV was taped into the crook of her arm.
“Thanks,” she mumbled. Her hand tilted toward the flowers. “Taking care of me—”
“You’re welcome.”
She might have smiled. Her arm twitched. He covered it with the blanket. She was asleep, but he said it anyway. “Looks like I wasn’t the one who needed to be saved.”
—
IN A ROOM at the end of the hall he found Biettermann, sitting up against the headboard reading Rolling Stone. A dripping noise. Andret pulled back the curtain. The tubing had been removed from Biettermann’s nose, but the white tape still clung there.
“What was it, Earl?”
“How do I know?”
“Nice.”
“Thanks, brother.”
Milo came around the bed. The dripping sound was the IV emptying onto the floor. “Interesting approach to treatment, Earl.”
Biettermann smiled wanly. “Ah, a joke.”
“You could both have died.”
“Ah, yes — you’re right.” He shook the magazine to turn a page. Then he looked into it and pretended to read. His eyelids closed.
“Well, I happen to care about her,” said Milo.
“That’s sweet.”
“What’d you give her?”
“What’d I give her? I didn’t give her anything.” He shook the magazine, but the page wouldn’t turn. Andret leaned down and lifted the sheet. The other wrist was handcuffed to the bed rail.
“Jesus Christ, Earl. What’d you do?”
“Evidently something.”
“You don’t even remember, do you?”
“Listen, Andret. I buy the best.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I take care of my friends. I took care of your friend.”
“What’d you give her?”
“Why don’t you go ask her?”
“I just did.”
“And?”
“She doesn’t know.”
Biettermann snorted.
“She doesn’t.”
“Listen, Andret. She begged. I don’t push anything on anybody. She’s not the Snow White you think she is. And you’re not Prince Charming.”
“Wrong fairy tale.”
“Doesn’t change the point. You think you’re going to save her with a kiss?”
“I couldn’t have. She wasn’t breathing.”
“Then how come you didn’t carry me away, too? How come you didn’t come back up for me?”
“I’d say you’re lucky I called an ambulance.”
“Well, somebody called the cops, too.” Biettermann looked at him. “That was you, wasn’t it?”
“It should have been.”
“Listen, Andret, we’re not junkies. This stuff gives me ideas.”
“What stuff, Earl?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He leaned forward and shook the magazine. Then he said, “But when you’re ready to try it out, you just let me know.”
—
IN MARCH, THREE weeks before spring break began, he left school. A bag of sandwiches and a tank of gas. Bells ringing from the towers and a silver light in the hills. North on 80, a flask propped beside him. He stopped at the same places they’d stopped on the way out — Reno, Elko, Salt Lake, Rock Springs — and walked alone on the same paths they’d walked together. Napped in the same truck stops. Huddled in the same clear cold with the same rumbling big rigs. In his mind he was going to demolish her. In the back of the car where he’d once slept curled into her warmth, he dozed with a peacoat pulled across his chest.
He was going to think about her and think about her until she disappeared.