The Bend of the World

Three days into sixth grade, a new boy sat across from me at lunch. My two best friends had both been sent to Sewickley Academy, and I felt alone as only an eleven-year-old could truly feel alone even though I’d been going to school with everyone else in Quaker Valley since kindergarten. The boy said, You’re Peter Morrison. He was even skinnier than I was, with a wild tousle of brown hair like a little lapdog had perched on top of his head, and he had a slight lisp: Morrithon, he said. Yeah, I said. I did some research, he said. Did you know that your great-grandfather, William Aloysius Morrison, was a well-known Nazi sympathizer in England who was hung by his neck until he was dead for being a traitor during the war?

When I told this to my parents that evening, my mother crunched the ice in her scotch and told my dad, I told you we should have sent him to the academy.

Oh, really, Suzanne, my dad said, and he sipped his Syrah. I think this proves the other point very well. It’s an awfully sophisticated imprecation for someone of Pete’s age, isn’t it? But, buddy, it’s not true. Neither of your great-grandfathers on my side was named William, and our family hasn’t lived in England for hundreds of years. Your grandmother is a Daughter of the American Revolution. Different Morrisons, I’m afraid.

You’re afraid, my mother said.

Hm, said my father. Yes, I might have chosen a different way to put it.

The next day I told Johnny, My dad says that we’re not related to the Nazi guy. Our family has been in America since, like, before the Revolutionary War.

Oh. His face fell. That sucks. But then it brightened. Maybe your dad is lying, he said. To protect your family from the shame. Maybe, he said, it’s a conspiracy.

Johnny and his older brother, Ben, had moved to Leetsdale, a weedy little town just up the river from Sewickley, from Florida to live with their grandparents. Ben was sixteen. He explained, Our parents are total fuckups. They’re like the biggest meth heads in Tampa. Do you know what meth is?

Yeah, I said.

What is it?

Duh, it’s drugs.

You’re right, Ben said. It’s cocaine for white trash. Do you know what white trash is?

Yeah, I said.

What?

It’s, like, I said, poor people.

We, Ben said, pointing across the bedroom at Johnny, are white trash.

Which wasn’t strictly true; their grandparents’ house was small and neat, more a cottage than a real house, in a small clearing at the end of a long driveway on a woody lot surrounded by raised vegetable beds and rhododendrons, and if it lacked the acquisitive grandness of the neighborhoods in my own town of Sewickley, the inescapable tackiness of ostentation even when that ostentation is superficially elegant, it wasn’t what you’d call poor. There was another building on the property, a shedlike garage that was bigger than the house itself, in which Johnny’s Pappy worked on his invention, a metastasizing perpetual motion machine that looked like the vast megalopolis of an immensely advanced but tiny alien race. But I gathered that in Florida their circumstances had been reduced; actually, that was how Ben put it exactly. In Florida, he said, our circumstances were much reduced. He wore eyeliner and listened to the Smiths and sometimes affected something like an English accent. Heeth gay, Johnny told me proudly.

Now, at a certain point in Fourth River, Fifth Dimension, Winston Pringle’s idyllic tale of East End childhood changes without warning to a crypto-Dickensian tale of row-house deprivation in the shadow of the Edgar Thompson Steel Works in Braddock. The digression involves a brilliant but troubled young student named Wilhelm Zollen:

Zollen’s stepfather at the time was a member of the Order of the Moose. Most days after his shift ended at the mill, he’d head down to the lodge to throw a few back. A few often became a lot, and his mother would send Wilhelm to collect the old man.

One day when he was on just such an errand, he chanced upon the head of his stepdad’s union, the United Steelworkers, a man by the name of Dan Sternbecker, entering the lodge with another man young Wilhelm didn’t recognize. I would later learn that this sartorial fellow was none other than Dr. Martin Dopffnording, a famous German expatriate who’d worked on the Philadelphia experiment and was now a vice-chancellor of the Carnegie Institute of Technology.

Being a curious child, Zollen followed this odd duo. They were deep in conversation, and didn’t notice him.

To his surprise, they did not go into the bar, but instead passed through a doorway to a small dark stairwell that he’d never noticed before. He gave them a few moments and then followed them. The stairs seemed to descend for many stories, frequently switching back on themselves. Why would a social hall have such a deep basement? he wondered.

At the base of the stairs was a small lobby with a sagging couch, a few chairs, some filing cabinets, and a receptionist desk. Beyond the desk, there was a heavy wooden door. He surmised the men had gone through the doorway, but dared not follow them, lest he be caught. Instead, he hid behind the desk.

He must have dozed off. He awoke some time later to the sound of the men emerging from the room. They passed swiftly, speaking to each other in a language that he did not understand at the time, although subsequent studies and investigations lead me to believe that it was an Altaic derivation of middle high Atlantean.

Wilhelm dashed across the room and through the slowly closing door. The room beyond was vast and dimly lit and very cold. In it, as far as the eye could see, were row upon row of heavy wooden planters, each of which held a single, healthy evergreen.

Anyway, Wilhelm explores, leaves, finds his stepfather half delirious and drunk at the bar. He gets the man home; the mother—it’s implied that she’s a sort of Blanche DuBois character, lost and alone in the industrial north—remonstrates the stepfather. He strikes her. Zollen attempts to intervene. The stepfather strikes him. When he wakes, he finds himself in some sort of examination room. An orifice opens on the far wall. In walks a man whose principal identifying mark is the big signet ring on his right hand and his eerily patrician voice. Don’t worry, he says. I’m a doctor.

Johnny said that he refused to believe that I’d seen a UFO.

I refuse to believe it, he said. You? You saw it? Of all people. Where’s the justice in that?

We were at the diner on Sunday. I’d eaten a quarter of a wet BLT and pushed it away. Johnny had ordered six scrambled eggs and toast and was working his way methodically through the pile.

What can I say? I saw a goddamn UFO. Three, actually.

Spiro, Johnny called to the owner, who was near the cash register reading a newspaper. Can you believe this guy says he saw a UFO?

Spiro shrugged. Effreeone sees crazy things these days. He shrugged. Welcome to your country. He leaned back in his stool and lifted the paper. I caught the front page: Mayor Denies Gay Rumors Led to Firings at Economy Council.

So, Johnny said to me, would you say that it was mirrored, or more like quicksilver? Quicksilver? Mercury. Um, both? In other words you had a sense that the skin had a certain liquid quality, as if it had been poured? Yes, yeah. But you say you could see your reflection? Yes, clearly. Was it illuminated? My reflection? No; are you being intentionally difficult; no, the ship! Well, I guess; I mean, we could see it. Wait, we? Yes, I told you: me and Mark and Helen. Who are Mark and Helen? The couple we met at the museum; who formed the entire first half of the story. Did they see it, too? Yes, like I told you. I’m not one to get caught up in the secondary details. Now, the ship, was it illuminated—self-illuminated?—I don’t know; it would have been hard to say; it reflected everything. Did you detect an aura of light around it? What sort of aura? Any sort—listen, you’re the one who saw the fucker, so describe it to me. I would not say there was an aura. A corona? Or a corona. A halo? You mean, like an aura? (Johnny put a hand over his face, inhaled deeply, said: Of all the people, it had to be you. It couldn’t have been me.) Sorry, I said; no, no halo. Did it make a sound? Johnny asked. Not as far as I could tell. No humming, no tones? None. Vibration? I didn’t feel any vibration. In other words, Johnny said, it had no visible or audible means of propulsion. Yes, I said, that would be accurate. When you looked underneath it, did you see a slight shimmering? What kind of shimmering?—sorry, sorry!—I know I’m supposed to describe it. A shimmering, Johnny said, like a heat mirage, like you’d see on a highway on a hot day. No shimmering, but I can’t say I looked very closely; is shimmering important? It’s strongly indicative of anti-gravity, Johnny answered. And you say, when it flew away, it tracked a precise vertical path? Precisely. And did it seem to actually fly away, or would you more say that it receded? I replied, I’m afraid I’m not entirely clear on the distinction. Johnny sighed. Do you remember Stranger in a Strange Land? Not especially well, no. Is that the one where he fucks his own mom? God, no, never mind. What I am asking is: Did the object appear simply to fly away, albeit on an unusual and physically impossible trajectory, or did it appear rather to fade out, as if perhaps phasing out of our plane of existence? The former, I said. It flew.

And was this—Johnny forked scrambled eggs into his mouth and chewed for a moment—was this all before, during, or after you made out with the chick?

You said you didn’t . . . Fuck you. You’re just making fun of me.

A little.

I didn’t make out with her. She kissed me.

I do like that sort of creepy, rapey aspect to the story. It plays well with your puerile Ayn Rand philosophy. It would’ve been rad if she’d taken you right then and there.

My philosophy isn’t an Ayn Rand philosophy.

Oh, please. Libertarian. Johnny laughed. Ridiculous. And don’t try to tell me that you’re an anarchist or whatever. You people are worse than Constitution fetishists. The individual. Natural rights. That shit makes me LOL in my pants. I happen to know that you had, and probably still have, hidden away somewhere, every book that Ayn Rand ever wrote. Including the books of you’ll-pardon-the-expression philosophy. The trade paper versions. The ones with the crackpot Albert Speer engravings on the front.

Fuck you, Johnny. You’re just mad that I saw a flying saucer and you didn’t.

I am, admittedly, a little regretful, but, eh, you know what they say: miracles are wasted on believers.

Who says that? I asked.

They do, Johnny said. I don’t know. Catholics, maybe. It sounds like something they’d say.

I’m Catholic, I said, and I don’t remember saying that. Or hearing it. It sounds like something you would say.

Please, you’re Catholic like I’m heterosexual. You were born to them, and they assumed you were one of them until around puberty, when suddenly they began to suspect something.

No one assumed you were a heterosexual, Johnny.

True, he said. I was born a butterfly.

As penance for my failing to come home the night before—Mark and Helen had dropped me off at Johnny’s, and I’d slept on his weirdly grandmotherly couch with his fat tabbies, Anton and LeVay—I’d told Lauren Sara that she could use my car for the day on the condition that she be the one to bus over and retrieve it from Oakland. The Greek had gotten a show at a gallery downtown, and Lauren Sara was going to help her move her paintings. Johnny and I left the diner. Johnny was supposed to meet some people about starting a noise band, and he said he’d walk with me as far as my apartment before heading over to Bloomfield. As usual he was wearing shorts, although it was only forty-five degrees and there was a chilly drizzle. Don’t you ever wear pants? I asked him. You used to wear pants, I think.

And deprive the world of my magnificent calves? He shrugged. Shorts are more comfortable.

Yeah, but aren’t you cold?

I know that your so-called heterosexuality reacts violently to even the thought of contemplating a masculine physique, but I find it impossible to believe that you haven’t noticed the hirsute girth I’ve wrapped myself in since we were kids. I am impervious to cold. I’m a goddamn hrimthurs.

A what? And not since we were kids. You were still skinny in college.

True, but too hairy to be a twink, so I decided to go all-out bear.

What’s a twink? I asked.

Really, Johnny answered, you know perfectly well. I know you’re terrified that people think you’re a fag, as if the sad heterosexual dystopia you’ve left in your life’s wake isn’t evidence enough of a shameful sexual parochialism, but no one buys the ignorance act.

Okay, I said. Christ.

So. Let’s talk about the flying saucer some more. Now, Pringle is a little, let’s say, inconsistent on the issue. In Fourth River, Fifth Dimension, he’s pretty clear that UFOs are extradimensional and that they travel back and forth from our universe and their own through a basically magical process, but then in Fountain of Spooks, which is the third book in the series, he implies that they come out of the hollow earth. He doesn’t say much in the second book, about UFOs anyway. Your descriptions are pretty consistent with the hollow earth variety. The extradimensional ones are more like balls of light.

Ball lightning, I said.

Shut it down, Johnny said. It is very strange, though, that we’re seeing both varieties in close proximity.

Yes, I said. You’ve definitely identified the part of this story that’s very strange.

Speaking of very strange, any progress on the Where’s Winston?

No, I said.

You haven’t even tried. I shrugged. Not that I expected otherwise. You’re such a materialist. It’s depressing. Maybe your close encounter will awaken some basic human curiosity in you.

It was definitely curious. How many books did this guy write?

Well, there are five that are under his sole authorship and another two that he cowrote with someone named Dr. Wilhelm Zollen, and then there are a bunch of sort of fan-fic, self-published versions that have popped up, apparently from people who heard him speak at conventions or whatnot and became convinced that they were participants in Project Pittsburgh. I’ve read the first three so far.

Project Pittsburgh is the thing.

Project Pittsburgh is the everything. It’s pretty awesome. You should read this stuff instead of shooting your load in bullshit liberal blog comments all day. It’s sort of an all-encompassing conspiracy theory. I mean, usually you get a Nazi, a time portal, and a train full of gold, or you get aliens and Feds, or you find out that Tesla was really Rasputin or Gore Vidal’s grandfather created chemtrails or AIDS was caused by sexual congress with bigfoots, but Pringle’s got a real conspiracy puttanesca thing; it’s all in there; he’s the Whitman of wack jobs; containment has failed on the multitudes.

Well, that all sounds very elaborate. What’s the upshot?

The upshot? Jesus Lord Mother of Mercy, you are becoming a corporate hack.

In a nutshell, I said.

Fuck you, Johnny said, but he could never resist; he was a pedant at heart. So basically, he said, you’ve got this ancient sacred geometry, sacred topography, what with the three rivers and the underground fourth river all meeting at the Point. Usual backstory. Indians knew it was holy, blah blah blah. So the Marquis Du Quesne, who’s the governor-general of New France, and who also just happens to also be the grand master of the Priory of Sion, hears about this, in particular the fourth river, which is, duh, obviously, the underground stream of medieval European esotericism, immediately puts together an exhibition, kicks out the Indians, and builds Fort Duquesne. So then Adam Weishaupt, the thirty-third-degree Freemason and immortal founder of the Bavarian Illuminati, gets wind of this, and basically does the Illuminati version of Aw No She Di’in! Now, uh, well, there’s basically a big digression about how Shea and Wilson stole all of Pringle’s ideas about Weishaupt killing and replacing George Washington, but yeah, basically, he uses Washington, who he either is or is manipulating, and conceives the Forbes expedition, and burns down Fort Duquesne, and erects Fort Pitt, and lays the groundwork for the founding of Pittsburgh. Then etc. etc. ad infinitum, a bunch of boring shit. Then Andrew Carnegie arrives and him and Frick get involved; Frick, by the way, is linked back to the Priory of Sion via a tenuous connection to Isaac Newton; the Pinkertons at the Homestead Strike, that’s all basically a blood sacrifice sort of thing, it begins this century-long magical working, which eventually gets taken over by the CIA, of course, which is where Pringle’s family gets involved. It’s the goddamn Remembrances of Conspiracies Past. Well, the point is to open up the transdimensional portal between quantum realities, allowing travel between any points in space-time and total control over the historical timeline and all that good stuff. I’m telling you, it’s fucking awesome.

But only two about aliens.

Out of the first three, yeah. I mean, I think he comes back to it when he starts writing in collaboration with Wilhelm Zollen. And they’re not really aliens. They’re extradimensional emissionaries; ascended beings who may already possess the power that the Project seeks. But, yeah, the second book is called The Testing House and it’s kind of a big digression about George Westinghouse and satanic ritual sex magic. Sort of a one-handed reader, to be honest. Very ahem descriptive, if you know what I mean.

I know what you mean.

Well, despite your general lackadaisical attitude about the whole deal, I’ve put out some feelers of my own. We’ll see what pops up.

You’ve put out some feelers. Phoned up some old contacts. Made some calls.

I have a not-insubstantial reputation in the Pittsburgh demimonde.

Your dealers don’t count, besides which, being a customer isn’t exactly being chairman of the board. Also besides which, I don’t see how the black guy who sells you fentanyl or whomever is going to help you find the presumably white dude who sounds like he got a little too much attention from Coach when he was a kid if-ya-know-what-I-mean and has never recovered. Why don’t you just send him a fan letter care of his publisher?

We were at the corner of Baum and Liberty. Ahead of us in the middle distance the spire of East Liberty Presbyterian poked at the woolen sky. Behind, the gray abandoned lots of the old Pontiac dealership. We started to cross. A little gray car zipped around the corner in order to make the light and missed us by millimeters. That was your car, Johnny said.

Yes, I said. It was.

That wasn’t your paramour in the driver seat.

No. It wasn’t.

Who, pray tell?

I can only guess the Greek.

Ah, the mysterious artist-friend-roommate. Personally, I suspect them of an entirely dour and unappealing sapphism. Speaking of people we need to contrive to meet. How much booze have you stolen from her since you and Lauren Sara contracted a bad case of each other? I can’t believe you don’t even know what she looks like.

I guess she looks like the girl driving my car around like a maniac.

I didn’t think she looked particularly Greek, but I’m not sure what a Greek woman looks like. Do they have a phenotype? I imagine they pop out as spry nonagenarians with a single hair on their chin and a single eyebrow on their forehead. We should ask Spiro about her. He knows all the Greeks. I can totally imagine what he’d say, too. Oh, Johnny, she ees artist. She never cumss to church. She ees twenty-fife and hass no babees. I wuddy, I wuddy. He’s very concerned with the overall fertility of the Greek race. You know he’s like whatever the Greek equivalent of a white nationalist is, right? Their party is called the Golden Dawn, apparently, which has nothing to do with the Hermetic Order. Supposedly has nothing to do. By the way, when are you going to get a new car?

What’s wrong with my car?

Nothing in particular, but when you went all corporate on me, I figured I’d at least get to tool around in a Bimmer as consolation for your selling out.

They don’t pay me enough.

You don’t have to tell me, Morrison. You sold your soul for a bag of beans. And you want to lecture me on the difference between an addict and a dealer.

I didn’t say addict.

Not in so many words.

We parted ways at my apartment. There was a moving truck out front, but there was always a moving truck out front. I saw one of my Uncle Bill’s cars, a little red chip like a Satanist’s pinkie nail among the grimy grays of the neighborhood cars. Oh, hey, Morrison, Johnny said, can you lend me a few bucks? I need to have a beer with these guys and my sovereign debt sitch is a little precarious at the moment. Quantitatively ease a brother’s burden.

I’m not a bank, I said, but I handed him one of the twenties Mark had handed to me the night before.

Maybe so, but I’m too big to fail, Johnny said, and he cackled on his way down the stairs. I texted Lauren Sara and asked her if she was letting someone else drive my car. She responded immediately; lied: no. then who almost just killed me?? I asked. me, she wrote; then, a few seconds later: only almost.

Then I texted Johnny: maybe theyre magic beans.

jack off, he responded.

I grabbed a beer and sat with the computer at the kitchen table. My squirrel regarded me through the window. Hey, squirrel, I said. He cocked his head as if he’d heard me and ran off down the roof. I wanted to look up Helen, but I didn’t know her last name, and although I supposed that I could call my Nana, I didn’t really want the long conversation that resulted from every call to Nana. Besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone to know I was interested. Then I remembered that Mark had given me his card last night, passed it deftly into my hand as I crawled out of his car with an exhortation to Call me; I could use you, which had sounded promising when he said it but hummed with ambiguity when I recalled him saying it. Mark Danner, it said. Senior Director of Special Occurrences, it said. Office of the General Counsel. Vandevoort IRCM. It bore the watermark of some sort of bizarre and vaguely Masonic implement that I would later learn was a stylized astrolabe, their logo. I googled Vandevoort IRCM and found their investor relations site. A diversified international company, it said. Combining Values with Value, it said. Empowering business to cross borders and transcend boundaries, it said. Its motto, in English anyway, was, Never Stop. Which seemed a little weirdly sexual to me, but, eh, they were Dutch, and perhaps something was lost in the translation. The French site said, A tout de suite, though, which wasn’t quite the same thing. The German page said, Unaufhaltsam.

Using Mark’s full name in combination with Helen and some generic art vocab, I found a few party photos in the New York social magazines; found that her last name was Witold; found that she was represented by Arnovich Galleries in Chelsea, which explained why she and Mark and Arlene had seemed to be on familiar terms. Arlene’s ex-husband was Daniel Arnovich, a bit of gossip I’d learned from my grandmother when the museum had hired Arlene. All because of her husband, Nana said. They were still married at the time. He’s thick as thieves with David [that was David Hoffman, the erstwhile chairman of the museum board], and I hear the whole thing is a ploy to get her out of New York. This was at a family dinner, and Mom had said, I never took you for a conspiracy theorist, Nanette. I believe that anything I’m not in on is a conspiracy, Nana said. At the time, I’d assumed she was referring obliquely to my mother’s hints about a retirement home.

Well, anyway, I found a little five-hundred-word piece Helen had written for Artforum a couple of years ago. It said shit like:

What I want is for my paintings to imply a microcosm that could actually exist even though it may not actually exist. I want the viewers of my works to be confounded and to wonder if they are seeing the abstraction of an actual object or the concretization of an imaginary one, and I try to apply equal rigor to the creation of forms that do not exist as to the re-creation via representation of those that do.

Not exactly Walter Pater, although I was immediately struck by its anticipatory echo of our experience the night before. I found images of her work; she painted huge canvasses, immense, wall-sized works that implied a hybridization of abstract expressionism and a cell biology text.

Her last show was called Abstract Empiricism.

I found a few other articles about her, which were blandly flattering, but which implied that, while she’d once stood on the cusp of becoming a big deal, she was now in a serious and possibly prolonged phase of Not Doing Much.

Her Facebook page was private. We had, as yet, no mutual friends.

Lauren Sara asked if she could keep the car another day. I wanted to say no, but said yes. I lay around the apartment watching movies on my laptop all day, then called Johnny to see if he wanted to grab a beer, but he kept babbling incoherently into the phone, saying things like, Morphic transgraphic, Masonic melodic, tectonic Teutonic bubonic, interspersed with an unsettlingly animal bray. You’re fucked up, I said. The tide, he screamed at me, is turning.

I tried Derek, whom I didn’t hang out with very much anymore, and he agreed to meet me for a beer at Silky’s on Liberty. How’s the city? I asked him. Derek worked in the solicitor’s office. Fucked, he said. Everyone knows that, I said. Yesterday council debated a resolution to amend the city’s no-hunting ordinance to make it legal to shoot a bigfoot. A bigfoot? I said. A bigfoot, he said. How the fuck did that come up? Oh, council doesn’t want to do anything that might result in an actual outcome, so they mostly just introduce resolutions on behalf of their constituents, and you know, only crazy people pay attention to city government. The bigfoot thing was introduced by Jack O’Bannon, who’s got Hays in his district, and you know how many nutjobs they’ve got out in Hays; probably some bigfoots, too; bigfeet. I’m surprised Tremone didn’t say that it was intimidation and discrimination against a minority species, I told him. Ha, he said; Tremone doesn’t come to council anymore. She’s in campaign mode. She decided she’s going for Gadlocki’s old state senate seat. But I thought she was going to run for mayor. Kantsky made a deal with her; he told her she’d never make it through the primary, which was true, and then he told her that he’d help her set up a U.S. Senate race after she served her term in Harrisburg, which is an ingenious way to put it, because you really do serve a term in Harrisburg; it’s like prison, and no one ever escapes. So who’s going to run against the mayor? Same as every time: a couple of asshole proggie jagoffs are going to split the East End vote and get thoroughly bunged out of the primary with thirty percent each; the mayor’ll take the blacks and the blue collars, get forty percent, and if we’re really lucky, the three remaining Pittsburgh Republicans will draw straws to see which one gets to hurl himself off the roof of the Duquesne Club in ritual sacrifice to the God of the Slightly Lower Millage Rate in the general; fuck, man, I’d say we should get rid of the government, but then I’d be out of a job.

I’m sure you’d land on your feet, I said.

Fuck that, he said. I’m perfectly happy on my ass.

Haha cheers, I said, and we moved on to our second beers.

Oh, hey, he said, you’ll appreciate this. I’m assuming you know about the whole flying saucer website thing.

Alieyinz. I hesitated; I said, Yeah, Johnny told me that it was completely awesome.

It’s something. Actually, it’s pretty funny. Currently blocked by the city servers, though, so I can’t read it at work. Anyway, so I’m in the deputy solicitor’s office the other day—have you ever met Karl? He drinks at Gooski’s sometimes.

No.

Nice guy, actually. Not a moron. So we’re prepping for this thing we have to do for the Fiscal Oversight Board, when Kantsky himself comes barging in, and you know, we’re all basically terrified of Kantsky, who’s completely nuts and completely irrationally vindictive.

Johnny says that he used to be in Mossad.

Uh, yeah, maybe if Mossad is the name of the Rodef Shalom softball team. Although, to be fair, it sounds like the sort of rumor that Kantsky would spread about himself. Anyway, he slams the door open and starts screaming, Where’s DiPresta? Where the fuck is DiPresta? And Karl’s like, Uh, the solicitor is at the municipal law conference in Dallas. He’s back next week. Can we help you? And I’m like, whoa, whoa, what’s this we business, ’cause the last thing I want is for that maniac to know who I am, so I just kind of slump down in my seat, but Kantsky doesn’t care who the fuck I am. He slams this paper down on Karl’s desk and Karl takes one look and sort of starts laughing but trying not to laugh, so I risk a look, and it’s a screen cap from the aliens blog, and someone’s pretty convincingly Photoshopped the mayor’s head onto a porn shot of some twink taking a dildo up the butt and added a little gray alien dude so it looks, you know, like he’s getting probed.

Oh dear.

Yeah. You should look it up, by the way. Turns out it’s a fucking .gif. The dildo goes in and out, and the alien smokes a doob. So, Kantsky’s all like, I want this shut down. I want this site gone. And Karl’s like, Jonah, listen, political satire is protected speech. The mayor’s a public official. Kantsky goes absolutely berserk; he’s all like, I WILL NOT HAVE IT SUGGESTED THAT OUR MAYOR IS SOME KIND OF . . . and then he can’t think of the word, because he obviously wants to say fag, but you have to be careful about that shit, so get this: he fucking says fruitcake, and Mary Tremone is, like, suddenly standing right behind him.

Oh shit, I said. What was she doing there?

She’s still the head of the finance committee. She was meeting with me and Karl.

That’s hysterical.

He couldn’t even say anything. He just stared at her for a minute, and she had the hugest shit-eating grin you ever saw, and then he just walked away. Then Mary comes into the office, sees the thing on Karl’s desk, and says, He doesn’t look a day over twenty.

By the way, I said, trying to sound like I didn’t give a shit, what’s the deal with all this UFO shit?

Persistent, Derek said. That’s the deal with it. We actually got a call from some producers from TLC who wanted to feature us in some kind of aliens-built-the-pyramids-and-such show.

You should’ve said yes, I said.

Fuck that. I referred them to Kantsky.

What if he finds out?

I’ll blame it on DiPresta, the prick.

Well, what’s the deal, anyway? What’s the official position?

You sound like Johnny, man. The official position? Christ, Dick Markiewinsky at the Convention and Visitors’ Bureau wanted to run a whole “New Area 51” campaign to attract tourists. Needless to say, that’s not happening. Look, no one gives a shit. Back in the fifties a whole goddamn B-25 crashed in the Mon and no one ever found it. This is Pittsburgh, man. It’s full of weird shit.

We ended up getting unconscionably drunk for a Sunday night, and Derek confessed to me that he was still pissed that I was dating Lauren Sara. You didn’t even like her very much, I said. In the whole time you were together, I never met her.

She sucks you in, Derek said, but then you’re embarrassed by her.

I’m not embarrassed by her.

Sure you are. She’s not cooo-ooool enough for you.

You’re drunk, I said.

We’re friends, he said. You and me.

We’re friends, I told him.

Fuck these bitches, he said.

Yeah, I said. Fuck ’em.

I gotta take a leak, he said.

After he’d been gone for ten minutes, I thought I ought to go after him to see if he was all right, and I found him sitting in the stall in the bathroom. Derek, I said. Hey, man, are you okay in there? He didn’t answer. I tapped on the door. Derek? I said. He mumbled. He grunted. I’m good, he said. I’m just going to close my eyes for a minute. Are you sure? I said. Fuck you, fruitcake, he answered. Okay, I said. I was drunk enough that it sounded like a fine plan to me. I managed, barely, to pay our tab, grabbed a few stale pretzels, and stumbled home. I fell into bed fully clothed and slept a blacked-out, anesthetized sleep until two a.m., at which point I woke with the desperate need to piss and a huge boner that made it nearly impossible. I stood unsteadily and willed it to go down; when it didn’t, I did my best to force myself to pee anyway, bending at the waist and trying my best to aim for the bowl, and I made a ridiculous mess. After wiping the toilet off with wadded paper, I felt slightly soberer, so I took a shower, my still-spinning head resting on the cool tile, my back arched against the warm water, the fan humming; I had not, upon reflection, had such a weekend of excess in a long time; it occurred to me that this was the regret I’d feared and then forgotten about, and I was suddenly tired again.

When I fell back asleep, I dreamed that I woke up on an operating table in a spaceship. I wasn’t bound to it by any physical restraints, but I couldn’t move. The walls were reflective silver. The room was illuminated with floating globes of light like solar flares in a bad photograph. My head was free to move. I looked down and saw that I’d been drawn open like a frog in a biology class. It didn’t hurt, and although I could see my own guts, I didn’t feel disgust or nausea. An orifice opened in the wall and an immense man dressed like something between a fry cook and a Freemason was carried in on an ornate golden litter by four well-oiled ancient Egyptians. The litter was decorated with bas-relief images of crocodiles and pine trees. He lounged like an odalisque. They set him on the floor, but he seemed to have some difficulty getting up. They bent to help him, but he slapped away their hands prissily. No, no. I’m fine. He had a high-pitched voice, like Truman Capote but without the affectation of matinee sophistication. I just need to get a little momentum. He moved like a seal on dry land, as if he weren’t in the habitat most suitable for his physiology, but he managed to rock himself into a sitting position and then haul himself to his feet. He pulled a pair of rubber gloves—not like a doctor’s, like for dishwashing—from his pocket and snapped them on as he walked toward me. Don’t worry, he said. I’m a doctor. What seems to be the problem? Someone’s cut me open, I said; my voice was calm as if I were telling him I had a little rash. Let’s have a look-see, he said. His hand nestled between my legs. Not there, I said. Now, now, he told me. I always start the exam with a little hand scan.

In the morning, I was so hung over that I walked out of my building and for a full minute stood gawking at the empty stretch of curb where I usually parked my car before I remembered that my girlfriend had it. It was cold but oddly humid, and I could already feel the back of my neck dampening my scarf. The sky was the same color as the sidewalk. I sighed and walked down to Liberty Avenue, where I stood on a wet corner beside the West Penn Hospital parking garage for fifteen more interminable minutes until a bus came, then discovered I didn’t have exact change and shoved a five into the meter. Hey, buddy, said the driver. Yeah, yeah, I said.

The only seat left was on the side-facing bench just behind the driver between two big women who were discussing flying saucers. I’m telling you, one of them said, I’m telling you it’s all just that damn mayor trying to win reelection. It’s a whatchacall. It’s all a goddamn distraction. Now, how’s a mayor gonna make a goddamn flying saucer, Sherri? the other one asked, and you got the feeling that these two frequently had some variant of this conversation, with the latter playing the skeptical role and relishing it. Yes, it occurred to me that it was Johnny and my future, or one such possible future, two batty old men in thrift store outfits hauling around shopping bags and loud opinions on the bus. I thought about what my dad had said; what if those two old nuts could call back to us; what if they were less an extrapolation than a warning? A younger black woman across the aisle had joined the conversation and said only white people ever saw UFOs. Shit, she said, I bet if they asked them to describe the aliens, they’d be all like, a African-American man, medium build, in a hoodie. Everyone laughed. I looked at the floor.

My favorite security guard was working the main desk in my building. Hey, Rick. Happy Monday, I said. Is that what day this is? he replied. It feels like a Monday, I said as I walked toward the elevators. I don’t know, Rick said. I only work here. He was as indifferent as the architecture. He had a small lexicon of workplace clichés worn through years of repetition into mantras; he had a set of about six gestures and expressions that he arranged with the infinite complexity of a Baroque composer working and reworking the same few musical figures. You and me both, I said. Yup. He chuckled. We sure got them fooled.

The Global Solutions building, which was no longer called the Global Solutions building, as our occupied square footage had declined over the last several years while a new anchor tenant, the law firm of Metzger Richards, had come into possession of most of the upper floors, was fortunately invisible in Pittsburgh’s skyline. We weren’t quite as tall as our neighbors, and we were a few blocks inland from the nearest river, and we’d have detracted from the city’s pretty accidental outline if we’d been included in it. The building had the proportions of a shoe box turned on end, graceless and utilitarian, with horizontal rows of metal cladding between each floor’s windows that made it appear squished, a spring collapsed under the weight of its own mediocrity. It had been built in the late seventies by a long-since-consumed and -digested bank, bought by a property holding company, briefly overrun by AllShip, the dot-com incarnation of Global Solutions, then partitioned out to the usual gang of lawyers and marketing firms on the make. There was a rumor that the lobby had once held a famous piece of artwork, an abstract mosaic by an artist of local origin whose name no one could ever remember, but if that had been true, the art was long gone, replaced by white walls that looked sleek until you got close enough to see that they were a hasty drywall job, and marble floors that, because they’d been improperly sealed, bore many brown spatter marks from the many spills from the many badly balanced coffees carried by the many hurried workers out of the ground-floor Starbucks.

There were thirty-three floors. Johnny thought that was highly significant, because there were thirty-three degrees of Freemasonry. I worked on twenty-five. If you add the digits, Johnny said, you get seven. Seven is a very important number.

Besides Marcy, my relatively sleepy corner of the office held Leonard, Tim, Kevin, Pandu, and the Other Peter, who obliged our need for clarity by going by Pete, although in his absence everyone reverted to calling him the Other Peter. In its internal literature and external job postings, Global Solutions emphasized its team environment. None of us knew precisely what that was, and it never seemed that we were working on the same project at the same time, but in theory, we were a Global Solutions Solve Team, and we hypothetically reported to an apoplectic thirty-seven-year-old vice president named Ted Roskopf, or, as his email signature put it, R. Theodore Roskopf, MBA, even though he was still a year away from finishing his executive MBA program. There was an unlimited supply of vice presidents at GS; they were functionaries who reported to directors who reported to senior directors who reported to senior vice presidents who reported to division directors who reported to the C-levels; they mass-produced them in the copy room or something, each imbued with glossy charts for brains and endowed with a Napoleonic desire to lay waste to the rest of Global Solutions and remake its codes and social order in their totalizing vision. Ted referred to us quite openly as My People and also referred, whenever he had the chance, to the “gray ceiling,” his own coinage, apparently, meaning the gang of fifty-and-overs who held all the executive offices, and who all conspired to keep Ted from revolutionizing and revitalizing everything, everywhere. If this was a real tech company, he’d say, you wouldn’t have this bullshit. I wouldn’t put up with it. There seemed to be flaws in this analysis, but he was so earnest in his desire to implement impactful change or whatever that it became endearing, and even though he treated us with an attitude of feudal disdain, we felt oddly protective of him, as, I suppose, actual peasants might have once felt about their own backwater milords.

I suspected that Ted had convinced himself that he saw me as his protégé. Among our team, Marcy and Leonard were unfireable as Diversity, she being a dyke and he being black. Pandu was an Indian, which didn’t count as Diversity, yet as an Indian with a heavy accent, he was suspect in Ted’s estimation and unworthy of special attention. However, he was the only one of us who displayed competence or appeared to know for what reason and to what end he arrived at the office every morning. Tim was too old: the geezer of the group at something over fifty, and probably also Diversity, or at least also unfireable given the potential of Age Discrimination; Kevin was just out of school and therefore too young; the Other Peter was a mystery, a blond Californian with a surfer’s drawl and an attitude of athletic disinterest so complete and imperturbable that one of us, probably Marcy, once said that he was either the Buddha or a retard.

Dude, the Other Peter said, you look terrible. He was putting his lunch in the refrigerator in the kitchenette, and I’d come in to find coffee.

Just a little cold, I said. I looked around. Where’s the coffee machine?

Oh, man, it’s cool. We got a Keurig. He pointed to a machine that looked like something out of Beverly Crusher’s sick bay.

What the fuck is a Keurig?

K-cups, man. Single-serving.

Oh, I said. Yeah. The pod things. Isn’t that wasteful?

Totally, he said. It produces, like, a bunch of times more plastic waste. But whatever, I don’t drink coffee.

Yeah, what do you do when you’re hung over?

Usually go for a swim. What about you?

I was trying to figure out the machine. Coffee, I said. Do you know how to do this?

Yup, he said, and he made me a cup of coffee.

What happened to the old machine?

I guess they all got junked. Purchasing replaced all the old machines. Didn’t you read the emails?

Who reads emails from Purchasing?

You should read the emails from Purchasing, the Other Peter told me. Those ladies pretty much run shit.

Yeah, well, this coffee sucks, I said. No offense.

Wouldn’t know, but I’ll take your word for it. You ever drink kombucha?

My girlfriend’s a fan.

It totally improves your intestinal flora.

Yeah. How is it for your liver?

Don’t know, man. It’s probably awesome for your liver, too.

Huh, I said.

By the way, he said, R. Theodore was looking for you.

Why?

Didn’t ask.

I drank more coffee, and went to my desk, and crossed my arms and lay my head on them, and although I had every intention of staying that way for thirty seconds, no more, when thirty seconds came I decided that I could do with one more interval, and when that interval had passed, I’d fallen asleep.

I woke about an hour later; no one had noticed, or, if they had, they’d either been good enough not to disturb me, or they just didn’t care, if that was even a distinction worth making. I felt better, but the bad coffee and the long weekend and perhaps the weakness of my intestinal fauna or what have you caught up to me, and I walked quickly and quietly to stairwell C, which I took down to the twenty-third floor. This was still officially a part of the Global Solutions office suite, but it had been almost entirely abandoned over the preceding five years as the Global Solutions Solutions Desk operations had been outsourced to Bangladesh and the Global Solutions TransSolve document translation program to India and the Global Solutions BrandSolve brand management division simply and unceremoniously euthanized when its last client departed for the sharper-focused shores of a real marketing firm. Some cubicles remained, and the conference rooms remained, along with the janitor’s closets and D-marks and break rooms and a few outdated copiers and something in the quiet hallways that suggested someone had recently been there, although of course no one had.

I’d surreptitiously snagged a newspaper from Leonard’s desk on the way down. I found a story about Councilman O’Bannon’s bigfoot-hunting measure in the B-section, written in that wry tone that tells you, reader, that you’re a little too sophisticated to believe it, but you’ll be amused to read it anyway. The article made a couple of references to taking a bigfoot, and I made a note to mention it to Johnny, who’d appreciate the double entendre, but it was the opening graf that really got me: As if the flying-saucer traffic weren’t enough, Councilman Jack O’Bannon (12th District) has introduced legislation that if approved by City Council will make it entirely legal to hunt an animal that most say don’t exist. Now some on Grant Street are suggesting that Pittsburgh’s growing tourism industry could look to these popular tales as a potential source of dollars and new investment.

So UFOs were a thing now. It made me slightly queasy. I hadn’t said anything to anyone except Johnny, but suddenly it felt as if everyone would know.

By the way, I never did tell anyone about that bathroom on twenty-three. I don’t know why. Secrecy, in the protection and in the breach, is the currency of an office much more than money itself, the small secrets worth more than the large. Nor did I mention to anyone that week, not even to Marcy, that I’d met a sort-of lawyer who’d confirmed the rumors of an impending sale or takeover or Other Important Event by an amoebic Northern European conglomerate, and when the week passed without my seeing or hearing from Mark, whom I’d unrealistically expected to pop by my desk for lunch on Monday, I began to reconstruct my memory of my weekend around a theme of uncertainty that it had not theretofore possessed, which was reassuring.

But I did ultimately mention to Leonard that I’d seen the UFOs. It was Thursday. Back when the original sightings had been reported, he’d mentioned to me in an offhanded and unembarrassed way that he’d once seen a UFO, but—he shrugged—I was doing a lot of dope back then. I always forgot that Leonard was actually older than Tim, which probably made me a racist. He didn’t look older than Tim. Leonard liked to tell stories about working at Global Solutions in the early eighties, when it was Allegheny Shipping and actually shipped things. Worked in the stockroom, he told me. You don’t even know what a stockroom is.

I know what a stockroom is, I said.

Yeah, academically, he answered.

Anyway, I told Leonard that I’d seen a UFO, and he said, Did you, now? There’s supposed to be some real weird shit going down this year. How do you mean? I said. Oh, you know, the whole Mayan apocalypse thing, he said. I didn’t know you believed in that sort of thing, Leonard. Shit, I don’t, but Elijah’s got my girl into it; she’s always making me watch those documentaries about ancient aliens and whatnot. Elijah, I said. Yeah. He’s got that store in East Lib. My girl’s real into authentic Africana, so that’s where she goes for her clothes.

Believe it or not, I said, but I think my buddy Johnny knows him.

Is your buddy into weird shit?

It’s his main hobby.

Then they probably do know each other. People who are into weird shit always find each other. It’s addictive behavior. Leonard was in recovery and believed deeply and zealously in everything but the anonymity. It’s the same as addicts, kid, he went on. When you’re an addict, you’ve got to find other addicts because they accept and understand your irrational behavior. To a crazy person, other crazy people are normal, and normal people are crazy. That was my main realization when I got sober. It’s not the spiritual shit, or the higher power shit. That shit’s important, but it’s not the main shit. The main shit is when you figure out that I’m not crazy because I’m on drugs, I’m on drugs because I’m crazy. That shit is the necessary diagnosis. Until you pinpoint that shit, everything you try is treatment for the wrong disease.

But I wasn’t worried about Johnny’s addiction to weird shit; I was worried about his other proclivities. I hadn’t heard from him all week other than one phone call early Wednesday morning. Silence otherwise, which was troubling, because he usually couldn’t go six hours without at least texting. The call had come at three-thirty in the morning. Your phone is ringing, said Lauren Sara with her eyes closed. I reached over blindly and silenced it. It rang again. I picked it up this time to look at the screen, saw Johnny’s name, and silenced it again. It rang again. Jesus Christ, I said, do you know what time it is?

Morrison, he said. Mooooorison.

Johnny, I said.

Morrison. Morrison. Lessison. Someison. Floorison, Doorison, Poorison, Goreison, Snoreison. Boreison.

Johnny, I said, what do you want?

What do I want? What do I want?

Yeah, what do you want? I was awake now, my feet slung over the edge of the bed, scratching idly at a shoulder that didn’t itch. It was raining, slowly and steadily, each drop against the windows the soft echo of a distant bell.

Morrison.

Fucking what? I snapped. I closed my eyes and felt the deep desire of my whole body and being to keep them that way.

Listen, he said.

I’m listening. I opened my eyes again.

Listen.

Yes. I’m listening. What?

My mind is a quantum computer.

Oh yeah?

My mind is a quantum computer.

Right. Will it still be a quantum computer during normal business hours?

A quantum hologram.

Oh, so not a computer.

Shut up. Listen. Shut up. Listen. A computer and a hologram.

Yeah, I said. Okay. What’s the upshot?

The upshot? he said. The upshot? He turned the word over like a plum pit you haven’t spit out yet, sucked on it as if it still had some sweetness attached. The upshot?

You sound like you could use an upshot yourself.

His voice changed. Wouldn’t it be cool, he said, if we could project a quantum hologram over Heinz Field for the Super Bowl? When I say his voice changed, I mean he sounded lucid in spite of the sentiment.

I rubbed my nose. A hologram of what? I asked.

A hologram of a hologram.

Johnny, I said, I’m going to hang up. I’ve got to go.

Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.

Yeah, I’m going to leave you. Why don’t you try to get some sleep and call me when you’ve come down or whatever? Preferably at a more civilized hour.

Listen, Johnny said. The tide is turning.

I think you may have mentioned that to me before.

The tide is turning.

Good night, Johnny.

Don’t leave me.

Good night, Johnny.

Morrison! he cried.

Yes?

I’m dead, he said.

No, Johnny, I told him. I regret to inform you that that’s not the case.

Are you sure? he asked.

Not yet, I said.

Not yet, he repeated. Not yet. And then there was a pause on the other end that grew into a long silence. I could hear him breathing, and when I was sure that he’d forgotten he was still on the phone, or forgotten that he had a phone, or forgotten how a phone worked and what a phone was, I ended the call and lay back down beside my girlfriend.

Johnny, I said.

Yeah, she said to her pillow.

Totally fucked up, I said.

Yeah, she said.

I’m an alien, I said. I came in a flying saucer.

Yeah, she said.

I love you, I said.

Aw, she said. That’s nice.

We should move in together.

Mm, she said. Cool. Let’s talk about it later. I knew from the way she said it that we probably wouldn’t. I kissed her shoulder. I think you’re the most normal person I know, I told her.

She turned her head and kissed my nose. Then you are fucked, she said.

On the bus the following Monday, because Lauren Sara had the car again, and two dudes were loudly comparing the merits of different strains of weed while the rest of the passengers tried to ignore them. Yo what about the FGD, man? You ever hear of that? No, man, what’s the FGD? That’s the Federal Government Dope, man. That’s the shit the Bill Clinton used to smoke. No shit? No shit. Me, I like the K2. Why’s it called the K2? ’Cause that’s how high it gets you, man. I turned my head. They were about my age, a black dude with dreads and a white dude in a flat-billed Pirates cap. What the fuck are you looking at? the white one said. I may have rolled my eyes. Don’t roll your eyes, man, he said. I’ll roll those eyes out your head. Man, shut up, said the black guy. Leave the man in peace. I turned back around. They got off at Wood Street, my stop as well. The white guy disappeared around the corner. The black guy walked up beside me and said, Hey, my man, you got three dollars you could lend me for bus fare? No, I said. You smoke weed? he asked. I shrugged. Sometimes, I said. You want to buy some? Dude, I said, really? Yeah, man. You got that corporate look about you, but I can tell you burn it down. I don’t have any cash on me, I said. Go get some, he said. How do I know you’ve got any? I asked. How do I know it’s any good? How do I know you’re not just trying to rob me? Rob you? He opened his hands. Because I’m black? I’ve got to be honest, I said. That’s one of many factors. He laughed, a hoot followed by a surprisingly girlish giggle. One of many factors, he said. I like you. Thanks, I said. It’s real and it’s good, he said. I’ll tell you what, I told him. I’ll buy it if you deliver it to my office. Where’s your office? Up there. I pointed. No way, my man. How am I supposed to get in there? There’s security and shit. You think they’re gonna let a nigga with dreads walk up in there with a backpack—he patted his old JanSport—full of weed? Tell them you’re a bike messenger, I said. Security guards don’t give a fuck. I’ll tell them I’m expecting you. Ask for Peter Morrison at Global Solutions. That’s you? That’s me. I’m gonna charge extra, man, for delivery. How much? Seventy an eighth. That seems a little steep. Delivery, he said, pronouncing each syllable emphatically. Right, I said. Come by around nine-thirty. You’re a weird dude, he told me. If you knew my friends, I said, you wouldn’t think so.

Hey, Rick. Happy Monday, I said. Is that what day this is? he replied. It feels like a Monday, I said. I wouldn’t know, Rick said. I only work here. You and me both, I said. Maybe one of us, he said. Hey, Rick, I said. I’m expecting a package around nine-thirty. Just send him up. Sounds suspicious, Rick said. Drug deal, I told him. Haha, he said. I’ll keep him away from the dogs. This place is buttoned up tight, I said. Oh yeah, said Rick. We’re a regular fucking Alcatraz.

I deleted some emails and agreed to some meetings and checked out the latest affronts to liberty on the Reason site and saw that one of their writers had picked up the story of the mayor and Marissagate, so-named for his estranged wife, in which the Growing Trend of Important Public Officials utilizing the tools and technologies of the Surveillance State for personal ends was flogged around the track for a few laps. Then Ted stopped by my desk and asked if I’d come to his office, and when I did he said, Close the door, and I said, Ted, are you firing me? and he said, Hell, no, you’re my main man around here, Pete. Okay, I said.

He tossed his jacket on the back of his chair and we sat down. He was a car nut, and his office was full of framed pictures of exotic Italian cars and signed portraits of drivers; I always thought it looked like a ten-year-old boy’s bedroom.

Pete, he said.

Yes, I said.

You’re buddies with the Other Pete, right?

I wouldn’t say buddies.

You get along, though. He doesn’t suspect you of anything.

Suspect me? I said.

You know what I mean.

I didn’t know what he meant, but I nodded.

I think he’s trying to make a move.

A move?

Has he said anything to you?

Last week he told me that I should try interval training if I wanted to improve my resting heart rate.

What?

No. He hasn’t said anything about making a move.

I heard his name up on twenty-six last week.

Maybe they’re talking about me, I joked.

He frowned. No, they’re talking about the Other Pete.

What are they saying?

He threw up his hands. He looked simultaneously older and younger than thirty-seven. He had good hair and a broad, dumb face and an air of clumsy athleticism that reminded me of a certain type of lawn-mowing dad—not my own, obviously—a certain type of clunking suburban prosperity that both my poor friends in the city and my family in their rich old Ohio River town viewed with varying kinds but equal degrees of contempt. He was aggressively conventional, and I felt that I ought to hate him, but I liked him, the dummy; for all the injustices that sustained his life, America’s wars and overseas empire, the depredations of business and the inequalities of income, the immiseration of the world’s poor, the destruction of the environment, the extraction of resources, the heedless burning of carbon fuels, the poisons in the water, the collapse of global fisheries—for all these things, which in large and small ways undergirded his four bedrooms in Treesdale and his elementary-school-teacher wife and their daughter and their OBX vacations, I found myself sometimes hoping that none of this would change; that it would all roll on as it was then rolling on, in order that he not be thrown into a different and unfamiliar world in which he couldn’t have exactly what he had and therefore wouldn’t be able to be happy, or to sustain, at least, that facsimile of happiness that so often passes for the real and original thing.

Well, anyway, I asked him what they were saying about the Other Peter, and he said, It’s nothing specific, but I just get the feeling that he’s trying to leapfrog. These kids, he said—he often referred to these kids, as if he and I were the same age looking down on the twenty-somethings coming up after us, and in this particular case I was pretty sure that the Other Peter was actually a few years older than me—these kids have no respect. You know, they’ve all been told they’re special. Trophies for everything. Everyone gets a prize. And they just expect everything to be handed to them without having to work for it.

Helicopter parents, I said, because the best way to converse with Ted was to pull a current, topical phrase out of the air and toss it into the air whenever he paused.

Exactly, he said. My dad, boy. You didn’t get any of that from him.

You have to pay your dues, I said.

Of course, on the other side, there’s the gray ceiling. These guys have been here forever, and they’re never going to change. They don’t want the new ideas. Do it our way, don’t rock the boat.

It is what it is.

Exactly, he said. Exactly.

I didn’t imagine that there could be a plot between the oldsters in the executive suites and the Other Peter; even in the abstract, taking Ted’s beliefs about the old and the young employees at face value, it made no sense; but Ted lived, I knew, in a world of self-created anxiety about his status; he’d risen, I gathered, very fast at first and then stalled. Most of the other vice presidents were in their mid-thirties. He felt his few years on them acutely. I promised that I would keep him posted.

Yeah, he said. That’d be great. Keep me posted. Keep your ear to the pavement.

I said I would keep an eye out.

By the way, Pete, he said. Someone told me you’ve been seen palling around with that dickhead Mark Danner. You oughta watch that guy.

I will, I said.

He’s not a team player.

Then there was a knock on the door and one of the administrative assistants poked her head in and said I had a visitor. I headed back to my desk. It was twenty after nine. You’re early, I said as I turned the corner into my cubicle.

You were expecting me? Mark said. He was sitting in my chair. He was wearing a pale gray suit and there was a VISITOR tag on the lapel.

Yeah. No. I was expecting someone else.

I like your area, Mark said. No photos, no tchotchkes, no indication of a human presence.

I like to keep my life and my work separate.

Hm, he said.

I find it hard to believe that your office is full of mementos.

I don’t have an office. My office is my immediate surroundings, wherever and whatever they happen to be. I’m a starship fitted out for distant voyages of exploration, armed when necessary.

That’s an interesting turn of phrase.

I thought you’d like that. So. He gestured to my spare chair, and I saw, despite the smirk, despite the mockery, what he meant about his office, because I felt immediately as if I were the visitor instead of him. So, he said, what Global Solutions have you come up with today?

I don’t really come up with the solutions, I said. I’m more of a licensing agreements and contracts kind of guy.

A fake lawyer, Mark said.

That’s a fair description. I’m probably cheaper than a real one.

Lawyers are pretty cheap these days. You’d be surprised.

You’re a lawyer, I said, and I don’t imagine you’re especially cheap.

I’m a recovering lawyer. The first step is admitting that you’re powerless to control your professional degree.

So what are you doing here? I asked. I don’t suppose you dropped by just to say hello.

No, he said. I had some early meetings, and I have some late meetings, and I figured I’d find your oar down in the slave galley to see how hard they make you row.

I hardly break a sweat. It’s very civilized.

You know what I like about you, Pete? he asked. I raised an eyebrow. Anyone else, he said, would pretend to be murdering himself to complete a hundred and ninety hours of work in a seventy-hour week. I like your nonchalance. I think you were serious about that unemployment thing.

Completely, I said.

Too bad, he told me. I have other plans for you. I’ve been bandying you about upstairs. Preparing the way.

That sounds ominous.

It is. How’s your girlfriend?

She’s well. She mentioned you the other night.

Oh yeah?

Just in passing. Whatever happened to your new friend, I believe, was how she put it. I told her I thought you’d already forgotten me. How’s Helen?

He glanced at his watch. Probably sober, he said. You made quite the impression on her. I tried to find some hint as to his meaning in his face, but he was inscrutable. She asked me to spare you. She said, Leave the poor boy alone and don’t get him caught up in your schemes and conspiracies.

Tell her I owe her one.

Oh no. She’d take it seriously, and then at some future point she’d actually try to extract the favor. Better let it dangle. You can owe me instead. We should all hang out again, however. She thinks we need more friends.

I remember you said you didn’t have friends.

He smiled thinly. Did I? he said. I say such interesting things.

Just then my other visitor arrived. Shit, I thought. De-livery, he said, singsong. Hey, I said. Who’s this? Mark said. I’m the bike messenger, he answered. Your shoes are wrong, Mark said. Shit, I said. Mark glanced between us; his eyes did that thing, that sideways wink, that high-speed scan of the circumstances. He bore his canines and grinned. Peter Morrison, he said. At work, no less. You dog.

We stopped at the newsstand on Liberty and Mark bought rolling papers and tobacco, because Mark said he only ever smoked spliffs, and then we walked down to the Point and got stoned sitting on the wide steps between the fountain and the rivers. This was the point of mystical convergence, the weak spot between worlds where Winston Pringle’s byzantine Project was supposed to break through the opalescent barrier dividing one second from the preceding and subsequent seconds, one world of potentiality from the next. Right now it was under construction, the whole sprawling bowl and the stocky pump houses cordoned off by temporary chain-link. There was one forlorn backhoe, and a couple of workmen in hard hats leaned against it as if they had nothing else to do in the world. Johnny would have said the superficial renovation was just a cover for the real construction deep underground, but to me it seemed like the typical Pittsburgh construction project, itself an exercise in a more mundane sort of time manipulation, the hours stretched to days, the days to months. I thought I remembered reading somewhere that the work was scheduled well into 2015. How would the Mayan calendar account for all that?

There was a faint hint of life on the trees in the park and on the trees across the water on the bluff of the West End Overlook—the warm, wet month just past was hurrying the living spring along. A bus crossed the West End Bridge over the Ohio. The West End Bridge always makes me think of the end of the world, I said. How so? asked Mark. He flicked our roach in a high arc; it hit the river and was gone. There were ducks in the water. The winter had been so mild that they’d never left. I don’t know, I said. It looks like it should be a ruin. Well, said Mark, I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Wait for what? The end of the world? I said. He shrugged and leaned back on his elbows. His jacket was across his lap. I don’t think any of us is going to live to see it, I said. Hm, he said. That’s the point, isn’t it? No one sees the end of the world. That’s what makes it the end of the world. The end of the world is like the horizon. The bend of the world, I said to that. Yeah, he smiled. Yeah. That’s good. But, I said, there’s more world beyond the horizon. More horizons, anyway, Mark said, which struck us both as very funny and we laughed for a minute.

Listen, I said, about the other night.

No, he said. I feel bad. I got you all caught up in the craziness with me and Helen. You got swept up in the wake. Sorry about all that.

Well, I said, to be honest, I guess I’m thinking more of the, you know, the whatever it was that we saw up there.

You seem embarrassed.

Maybe. I’m not sure how to broach the subject. Hey, nice to meet you. Had fun partying. Yeah, things got a little too wild, maybe. Oh, how about the UFOs? It’s the last detail, you know?

Aren’t UFOs the new thing around here? Don’t you read the papers? Pittsburgh is like space invaders central.

I guess, I said.

You know what your problem is, Mark said, though not as a question. You’re jaded, but it’s self-imposed. How old are you, thirty?

Twenty-nine.

Close enough. Listen, how many people get to see a genuine flying saucer in their lives? Not many, which is why no one believes they’re real.

As opposed to: they’re just not real.

Who cares if they’re real? Give credence to the incredible. He turned toward me, propped on one arm. You saw them. They exist. Whether they’re real or not.

You saw them, too.

Yes.

Well, do you think they were real?

I think that’s the least interesting question you could possibly ask.

You’re not interested in whether those things exist or not?

Well, that’s not the same thing, is it? Obviously they exist. We saw them. That doesn’t mean they’re real.

So they’re, what, hallucinations? Illusions?

Probabilities, Mark said. When there’s a ten percent chance of rain, and it rains, is the rain unreal?

I said, But you can prove it rained.

How? The rain disappears. It gets absorbed. It evaporates.

I don’t know, I said. You can record it. You can collect it in a jar.

Didn’t Archimedes say, Give me a jar big enough, and I will bottle a UFO?

That sounds right, I said.

So let me ask you a related question, Mark said.

Shoot.

What are you doing at Global Solutions?

How is that related?

Whatever. Pretend it isn’t. The question remains.

It’s my job.

Do you like it?

I don’t know. Do you like yours?

I don’t have a job. I am a job. I’m the mere human avatar of something wholly inhuman.

Are you an alien?

Mark laughed and said, You have no idea. I’m a lawyer. That’s worse.

I thought you said you were a sort-of lawyer.

I’m a sort-of alien.

You know, I said, my friend Johnny doesn’t believe in aliens. He thinks the UFOs are visiting from another dimension.

That’s still alien, isn’t it? said Mark.

True, I said.

Anyway, you’re not answering the question.

Making money, I said. Working. Getting by. Not all of us are lucky enough to be the human avatar of something wholly inhuman. I giggled. Some of us are just trying to pay the rent.

Now, that, Mark said, is depressing.

Let me ask you a question, I said.

Fair enough.

What are you doing at Global Solutions?

Technically, I’m not at Global Solutions.

Your Honor, I said, please instruct the witness to answer the question.

Oh, good, Mark said. Lawyer jokes. I told you. I represent the entity that’s going to eat you. You are the giant squid, squidling around in the depths, feeling bigger than everything else. But Moby-Dick is heading for you. You’ve been pinged. He’s got you in his sonar.

You’re the whale? Or the sonar?

Oh no. Just a minor tooth.

You lead a very metaphorical existence, I said.

Yeah, he said, I do. What time is it? I am literally starving.

Around eleven, I said.

Close enough for lunch. How do you feel about Thai?

On Friday, I got promoted. John Bates and Sylvia Georges called me upstairs, which had never happened before. He was the CFO, and she was the general counsel. If you’d have asked me, I’d have doubted they even knew who I was. We met in a conference room with a view through a gap between buildings to the Allegheny and the North Shore and the first steep rise of the North Hills. An assistant offered me coffee and water. I was such a fool that I thought they were going to fire me, as if either of them would do that themselves. There was another woman there whom I didn’t recognize. This is Jennifer Swerdlow from Metzger Richards, Bates said. Peter Morrison, I said, and we shook. Bates said, You may have heard rumors that the company is for sale. Sure, I said. These are only rumors, Sylvia said. She was in her fifties and looked like she played three matches of tennis every morning. Yes, I said; absolutely. However, Bates said, they happen to be true. His shirt was open at the collar; he had a bit of a belly; you could tell he liked a drink or two. Generally true, Sylvia said. True in a limited and strictly defined sense of the word true, said Jennifer Swerdlow, who was round, though not fat; who might have been the host of a cooking show were it not for her eyes, which suggested that you not look away if you happened to catch them. Right, I said. Let’s say instead that we’re entering into a new partnership, Bates said. A deal, Sylvia said. An arrangement, Swerdlow offered. An arrangement, I repeated. In effect, Bates told me, an equitable merger of entities is being set up to ease a period of transition. However, Sylvia said, the autonomy of one of these entities may, upon the occurrence of certain . . . other events, be terminated, in which case, the other entity will take on a more proprietary position vis-à-vis the prior equal partner. Okay, I said. It seems, Bates said, that you’re acquainted with one of the principal movers in the other entity. He asked for you, Swerdlow said, by name. She picked at one of her nails. She sounded neither pleased nor displeased. I didn’t say anything. Our feeling, Sylvia said, is that, given this existing relationship, and given this person’s clear confidence in your abilities and, moreover, in your discretion in re: the matter at hand, you could very adequately serve as an ongoing liaison until such time as those other events occur. You’re talking about Mark Danner, I said, from Vandevoort. We’re talking in the abstract, said Swerdlow. Right, I said. Well, in the abstract, what happens to me after, uh, the occurrence of these other events? Assuming any of these events occur, said Sylvia, and assuming you take part in them as we’ve just laid it out for you, you would be, along with the group of us managing the transition, insulated from any potential negative outcomes that might accrue to less directly involved employees. Insured, Bates said. Indemnified, Swerdlow said, with emphasis. So this is a promotion, I said. For me. It’s a transition, said Sylvia. What about Ted? I asked. Who? said Bates. Ted, Sylvia told him. That veep I mentioned to you. The forty-year-old? Bates said. Yes, she said. Oh. Bates shrugged. He’s your boss? he asked me. Yeah, I said. Currently. Fuck him, said Bates. He’s a zombie. He’s a nice guy, I said. He’s a zombie, and you’re still human. It doesn’t matter what he was. Keep the shotgun handy. Swerdlow stood up. Are we good here? she asked. I’ve got another thing. Sylvia looked at me. Are we good here? she asked. Then I did something I didn’t know I had it in me to do. How much? I said. What? said Bates. How much money? I said. For me, I mean. Oh. He looked at Sylvia, who shrugged. How’s a buck ten? A what ten? I couldn’t believe it. Sylvia laughed. Obviously sufficient, she said. Great, said Bates. He took my hand in his meaty paw. Welcome aboard. If you say anything to anyone before we tell you, I’ll chop your fucking head off. Karla will call you on Monday to get all the HR shit ironed out. They left me in the conference room alone.

I called Lauren Sara and said, Let’s have dinner tonight. I can’t, she said. I’ve got Patra’s opening. Who? I said. My roommate, she said. Which one? No, she said. Not at the house. At my studio. Skip it, I said. I can’t, she said. I promised. Plus, I’m hanging out with Tom, who’s still mad at you, by the way. A woman scorned, I said. What? she asked. Nothing, I said. She said, How about tomorrow night? I’ve got the opera, I told her. Well, after, she said. We can get a drink. Aren’t you going with your parents? You’ll need one.

That’s true, I said, and it was agreed.

I tried Johnny and he still wasn’t answering. I tried Julian, suggested we play a few games of racquetball and have a beer. Love to, he said, but I have to go to some art thing with Tom. He said Lauren Sara was going to be there. You’re not going? I don’t do art things, I said, when I can help it. Lauren Sara doesn’t mind? No, I told him, she prefers it that way. Your girlfriend is a miracle, he told me. Then I’m fucked, I said. I called Derek. I’ve got to meet someone later, he said, but I’d have a beer. We met at the Thunderbird on Butler Street, where a bluegrass band played a distracted set against the din of a lot of assholes who didn’t care. Someone even turned on the jukebox at one point, until the bartender noticed and pulled the plug.

What’s new in the private sector? Derek asked me.

I am, I said. Promotion.

No way. Let me buy you a shot.

I will indeed.

How the hell did you get promoted? I always figured you and Johnny just IM’d all day.

I know all the right people.

So it was an inside job? He caught the bartender. Two Maker’s, he said.

A conspiracy, I said.

Well, congrats. The shots arrived. We raised them. Yinz and yourn, Derek said. Cheers, I said. We touched the glasses to the bar and then drank. So, he said, what’s the new job?

No idea.

Sounds like your old job.

Exactly, I said.

I’m ashamed in the shadow of your ambition.

You’re ambitious. You went to law school.

Law school is the opposite of ambition. Also, I think if they offered me a promotion, I’d turn it down.

I wouldn’t call it an offer, exactly. It was phrased more like an ultimatum.

Well, cheers nevertheless. When did all this happen?

Just today. You’re the first person I’ve told. Of course, you’re the only other person I know with a real job.

Lies and deceptions. You take that back.

No offense.

None taken. Hey, on an unrelated note, have you heard from your buddy Johnny?

Not exactly, I said. Why?

Well, he called me the other day. I was at work, so I just let it go to voice mail, and he left me this cryptic message where he just said, The tide is turning.

Yeah, I’ve heard that one.

What the fuck?

You know Johnny.

Yeah, well, he sounded as if he was phoning in from the fifth dimension. He forgot to hang up, so I have this message with him telling me that the tide is turning and then heavy breathing for another five minutes.

I’ve gotten similar calls. I opened my palms and raised my eyebrows. What can you do?

Nothing much. But the reason that I ask is that that website, you know, the Alieyinz site, hasn’t been updated for a couple of weeks, and obviously Johnny is on his annual chemical pilgrimage, and somehow I wondered.

Oh, Jesus Christ, I said. Of course. Of course it’s his site. That fucking asshole.

Really? He told you.

No, I’m an idiot. It never occurred to me before. But it’s totally obvious, isn’t it? I mean, who else?

Yeah. And the thing is, I heard from my buddy over in the DA’s office that Kantsky’s really been shaking the police tree on that whole thing I told you about, the picture and all.

Fuck. Is he in trouble?

Probably not for the website. I mean, I suppose Kantsky could ruin his future political career. He laughed. Otherwise, there’s not really anything they can do about the Photoshopping. But what with Johnny’s other, uh, habits and behaviors, let’s say, there’s always the chance that they could get him for something unrelated and nail him to the wall in an act of vindictiveness. I mean, you remember when they busted Ron Javronski’s kid for selling coke.

Who?

Javronski? He was the head of the Health Department and was going to run in the Eighth District against the mayor’s buddy Joe Tallon, but then his kid got busted for minor possession and Kantsky somehow got it bumped up to intent to distribute. Poor guy hadn’t even officially announced his candidacy yet. His kid pled out and got probation and time served for the couple of weeks that they kept him in county, but everyone said the plea deal was contingent on the dad dropping out of the race he hadn’t even entered yet. Then they fired him, the fucks.

Christ, I said. How do you work with these people?

Hey, whaddaya want, a bunch of Republicans? Good God, those people don’t believe in evolution! We laughed. But seriously, if you talk to him, just tell him to watch his ass. The whole thing will blow over when someone else looks at the mayor the wrong way, but until then, Photoshop of the Mayor Getting Diddled by a Little Gray Man is on the agenda. Your Government in Action.

As a sidebar, this is a persistent theme in the collected works of Winston Pringle; the narrative tended to dilate around minor disputes between obscure named officials. You kept waiting for the wormhole to open and the ancient evil to pop out, tentacles flailing, and instead you got:

Major Bradley, who was in charge of Project logistics, approached me one evening in the canteen. He reproached me for going above his head to Colonel Nelson regarding my concerns about the environmental impacts of the chemical processing units.

I had long believed that the major resented my presence as a civilian. Also, these guys were visibly upset at the privileges I garnered through my family connections.

I suggested that we resolve our differences by approaching a joint liaison officer with a background in mediation and arbitration, but Bradley worried that this could compromise the deep classification of the Project. “Perhaps someone already involved,” I offered, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Both of us ultimately wrote up separate incident reports detailing . . .

It goes on in that vein for a while. They could’ve been talking about Global Solutions, although, to be fair, at the end of that particular chapter they actually instantiate a yeti out of the interdimensional ether. It rampages through the compound before Pringle figures out how to incapacitate it using a quantum something or other. Then Major Bradley, the hothead, draws his sidearm and shoots the poor creature between the eyes.

Because Lauren Sara had to borrow the car on Saturday, I was late to pre-opera dinner with my parents at the Duquesne Club. I told you I needed the car by six, I said. It’s only ten after, she said; it’s cool. What were you doing, anyway? I asked. I was helping Hegemonica get ready for her show tonight. Whatahwhoica? I said. Who’s that? My roommate, she said. Patra? I said. The Greek? No, she said. My roommate roommate. Corey. Hegemonica is his drag name. Hegemonica, I said. Hegemonica Preshun, she told me.

She asked if she could use my Internet; then she was going to his show; then we’d meet up when I got back from the opera. Yeah, yeah, I said, and I ran down the stairs and sped downtown.

The club was on Sixth Avenue, just around the corner from the theater in a square stone building that was meant to recall a London club but which managed to look merely institutional. I mean, mental institutional. Incidentally, my offices were just up the street. It had been founded back in the 1870s by exactly whom you’d expect, and the front hall still bore a prominent and terrible oil portrait of Andrew Carnegie gazing down in beneficent disdain. The captains of industry still belonged, although they tended toward the lunchtime hours, and the membership had long since declined in aristocratic quality so now any asshole with an MD or a buck-fifty paycheck from a bank could join. And did. Johnny was fascinated by the place and had once pestered me into sneaking him in so that he could seek out the Masonic initiation chamber in the basement. I told him I was pretty sure the kitchen was in the basement, but he insisted. It involved several trips to the thrift store to find a suit and tie sufficient to his dimensions, but eventually we did go. Fearing repercussions, I’d confessed the whole plan to my father. I’d expected him to try to dissuade me, or forbid me. Lord knows what I was thinking, because my father wasn’t the sort of man who forbade things. He laughed and said delightful several times, then insisted on taking us to dinner himself. While he engaged the waiter in a colloquy about Italian varietals, Johnny and I slipped down a service stairs to the basement, where we found the kitchen. Of course, Johnny pointed to the floor. Black and white tile! he exclaimed. Didn’t I tell you? It’s a goddamn Masonic temple. It’s part of the sacred geometry and architectural symbology of the whole underground stream! Johnny, I said. It’s linoleum. Nevertheless, he said, and he grinned and grinned for the rest of the night. I was too embarrassed tonight to valet my little car at the club, and parking made me even later. I took the steps to the front door two at a time, but the host stopped me before I could dash past him and indicated with a subservience calculated to indicate his social superiority that I’d be required to wear a tie. I’m wearing a tie, I snapped, but then realized that, although I’d picked one out, I’d forgotten to put it on, having got too caught up in anticipating Lauren Sara’s lateness to remember. Oh, Jesus Christ, I said. Really?

I’m sorry, sir. The host shrugged. He wore a tuxedo and his black hair was combed and pomaded in an old-fashioned slick away from his forehead. He was chubby. He looked like a cartoon killer whale. I should not, I decided, have smoked some more of that weed while I waited for Lauren Sara. He gave me a paisley tie that looked like it had been salvaged from the costume of a college glee club. Really? I said. I’m sorry, sir, he said. We used to have more, but people always forget to return them. Whatever, I said, and I tied it in the mirror above the foyer fireplace and then found my parents at a table in the Laurel Room.

Peter, Dad said, we wondered if you’d make it.

Traffic, I said.

I didn’t notice any, said Mom.

Well, Suzanne, we did come from the other direction, Dad said. Would you like a drink? He motioned for the waiter.

What are you having? I asked.

Gin and tonic, my mother told me.

My father had a bowl of red wine. I’m having this very interesting Petite Sirah, he said.

I’ll have Syrah also, I told the waiter.

Actually, my dad said, it’s not Syrah; it’s Durif. The name is rather misleading. Of course, Durif actually is related to Syrah, a cross, I believe, between Syrah and Peloursin.

The waiter looked at me as if this might change my mind.

It’s fine, I said.

Very good, he said.

We’ll just have a bottle, Dad told him. You’ll have a glass, won’t you, Suzanne?

When was the last time you saw me drink red wine? she asked.

Yes, that’s very true. You’ve never cared for the tannins. Well—he patted my shoulder and winked across the table—I’m sure Peter and I will manage, won’t we?

The wine arrived. My mother ordered a scotch. My dad asked my mom what she was going to order. You always ask me what I’m ordering, she said, and then you order the same thing.

You’re a good orderer, he said. Left to my own devices, I always make the wrong decision.

The filet, she said. Just like every time. It’s the only thing they don’t routinely fuck up. I snickered. She looked at me. Peter, she said, where on earth did you get that tie?

You don’t like it? I said.

You look like a game show host.

The front desk, I said.

Ah. She drank the rest of her G&T and switched to her new drink. I told you we should have gone to the Carlton, she told my father.

Did you? he replied. I do like their wine list.

So I have some news, I said.

Oh dear, my mother said.

Suzanne, said Dad.

I got promoted, I told them.

Thank God, Mom said. I thought you were going to tell us you were getting married.

Married? I said. It sounded as improbable as encountering extraterrestrials, except of course that I had, perhaps, encountered extraterrestrials, and people my age did get married, quite often, in fact, and it occurred to me without warning, as if the whole world had briefly slammed on its brakes and sent my body surging against the restraint of the present moment in time, that I would be thirty in July.

Congratulations, buddy, my dad said. That’s great. What’s the new job?

It’s, well—I considered my phrase book of management mumbo-jumbo—it’s a new position, I said. So it’s going to be a collaborative development process that’s going to involve my input as well as a lot of the senior staff group. It’s pretty cool, actually; I basically get to design my own job.

Hm, my mother said. Like when you designed your own major? I’d flirted with this option in college, a tantalizing prospect that involved movies and books and trips abroad, which had amused my dad and infuriated my mother, who’d suggested that I might also design my own funding mechanism for tuition, which in turn sent me scuttling back to econ. In retrospect, it made no difference; economics was a far more elaborate fake than anything an undergraduate could ever come up with on his own; it inhabited a world of Tolkienian depth and ingenuity, a mythic creation with its own gods and greater and lesser spirits and heroes and conflicts and magic: a monument of imaginative world-building, albeit a little embarrassing as an adult enthusiasm. Fortunately I could tell the difference between a supply function and an indifference curve about as readily as I could tell the difference between a wizard and a wood-elf.

No, Mom, I said. Not like that. And I got a raise.

Well, now, that’s more like it, she said. She smiled. You can pay for dinner.

Now, Suzanne, we need to make our minimum, Dad said.

I was kidding, she told him.

On occasion, sweetheart, it’s a little hard to tell.

Seriously, honey, we’re very proud of you, Mom said, and she patted my hand across the table. Keep me in the loop.

We all ordered the filet, which arrived too soon and at mysteriously different temperatures. Mine sat in a pool of its own blood; Mom’s was medium. My father touched his gingerly with his fork. It seems, he said, a bit crisp.

Send it back, I said.

Well, he told me, they can’t exactly uncook it, I suppose. And he tucked in methodically. I glanced toward my mother. Don’t look at me, she said. I never send anything back. Why give them the opportunity to compound what they’ve already fucked up? Give me yours; take mine. I don’t mind blood.

We exchanged. Well, I said, you’re a surgeon, after all.

I’m not a cow surgeon, she said.

During the meal, the conversation turned to my grandmother. I hear you ran into Nanette at the museum, Mom said.

Yeah. You didn’t tell me that she’d broken her toe.

She broke her toe? My father was surprised.

She didn’t break her toe, Mom said. I looked at it, remember. She just bruised it.

She was in a wheelchair, I told them.

Oh, good Lord, Mom said. She stared at my father. Peter, honestly, we have to do something.

That seems a bit precipitous, don’t you think?

We’ve been talking about it for years. It’s the very opposite of precipitous.

I’ll talk to her, Dad said.

If she’s in a wheelchair, Mom said, then she’s doc-shopping again. You know how I feel about all this. How many Dr. Feelgoods does one aging matriarch need?

Believe it or not, I said, she seemed fine, despite the wheelchair.

She was very pleased to see you, my dad said, although she did say that you never call unless you need something.

It’s hard to get off the phone with her.

Honestly, Mom said.

I never noticed, my father said. He was finishing his steak. He poured himself more wine. I find that as long as I have something to work on or read, then I don’t mind that she goes on a bit. What did you talk about, buddy?

Her toe and her failing eyesight. And pedophiles.

Hm, yes, Dad said. I remember when you were in preschool, she was very concerned about the satanist day cares in California. Do you remember, Suzanne?

Yes. I remember.

She wouldn’t believe that it was all a hoax.

She still doesn’t believe that it was all a hoax, Mom said.

I laughed. That’s why she always loved Johnny, I told them. They both believe in everything.

How is your friend Johnny? Mom asked. I can’t remember the last time I saw him. No, that’s not true. It was at your uncle’s Christmas party a few years ago. He and your father were embroiled in a conversation about concentration camps all night long.

He’s very knowledgeable about the Eastern Front, my dad said.

Yes, Mom said, but at Christmas?

He’s good, I told them.

Before we left to walk to the theater, I excused myself and went to the restroom. The club still used bathroom attendants, and I struggled mightily to pee into the marble urinal while a little old man who looked like a turtle in a tuxedo stared at my back. I managed to dribble something out. I washed my hands. He handed me a towel, then collected it in a little basket. Keep an eye out, he said as I turned to leave.

I’m sorry? I said.

Have a nice evening sir, he said.

I stepped into the hall. The whole place seemed a little down on its heels of late. If those captains of industry and politics had once run a good portion of the world, or at least the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, out of these rooms, anymore it looked like an overgrand B&B, flocked and dusty and a few decades out of date. But what was odd was that I thought I saw my mother at the far end of the corridor, grasping the hands of the fat maître d’ in a weird, cross-armed handshake. It was dim, and they were far away. They saw me looking and swished through a door. I should not have smoked that weed, I thought. I went back downstairs and found my parents, both of them, at the table. So, I said. Yes, said my mother. Let’s, Dad said.

But Johnny was not good at all, and during a witch’s sabbath scene whose staging was what I imagined a drag show by Hegemonica Preshun would look like, my phone vibrated in my pocket, which, when surreptitiously checked, presented a text from Derek: hey call me asap re jonhy. So I slipped out of the auditorium and through the lobby and lit a cigarette under the marquee.

Hey, Derek answered. I’m glad you called so quick. Listen. Johnny got picked up by the cops.

Oh shit.

Don’t freak out.

I’m freaking out a little. They arrested him?

No. It’s nothing like that. Forget what we talked about. Nobody knows about any of that. He’s not in jail. He’s at Presby.

The hospital? Oh Jesus.

It’s okay. I don’t know that much, but he’s okay. High and paranoid, but okay. Mine was the last number called on his phone, and apparently he’s got me listed as Brother Derek, so they thought I was actually his brother. They called me from the hospital and sort of gave me the rundown.

Which is what?

Well, they’re not sure exactly what he’s on. Some kind of dissociative, or dissociatives. So apparently he went down to the museum dressed in some kind of Nazi costume and was pacing around the sculpture garden telling people that the tide was turning. You may remember that turn of phrase.

Fuck.

Yeah. Anyway, the guards called the cops, but no one wanted to press charges, and the cops didn’t want to throw some highed-up wack job in county, so they took him to the hospital. I figured maybe you’d know how to get in touch with his family.

Yeah, I said. Well, his parents are down in Florida and they’re completely estranged, and his brother died years ago, and so did his grandparents.

Does he have insurance?

Does he seem like he’d have insurance?

Point taken.

Oy, I said. I’d better go over there.

Are you sure?

Yeah. I’m wearing a suit. I look like an upstanding citizen. If someone has to talk to cops and doctors, it might as well be me.

Let me know if you need anything?

I will, I said. Thanks for calling me.

Sure, he said. What are friends for but to deliver bad news?

There were two police at the hospital, Officers Bild and Granson, the former thin, black, and wearing dark shades; the latter large, white, and with the suggestion of muscle below his fat that implied a former military man. After they clarified our relationship—No, not a relative, a friend; he hasn’t got any family; we grew up together—Bild said, We aren’t going to charge him. He resisted arrest a little, but I think your buddy must’ve been strung out for a few days now, because once we snatched him up, he pretty much collapsed.

Yeah, I said. I’m sorry about the inconvenience.

That ain’t your fault, sir, said Granson.

True, I said.

We do have to file a report, though, said Bild. And we’ll need you to sign saying we released him into your custody.

Isn’t he in the hospital’s custody?

Technically? Bild said.

You know what, I said. I don’t care. Yes, I’ll sign.

I signed their report.

I really am sorry, I said. He can be a handful.

He was docile enough once we got him in the squad car, said Granson. The cop laughed. He told me I looked like Volstagg.

Who? I said.

That’s what I said, Granson told me. Apparently he’s a fat guy in comic books.

He’s Thor’s friend, Bild said. He laughed, too. My kid’s into comics. He asked me what I thought about them putting a black guy in the Thor.

Oh man, I said. I’m really, really sorry.

No, Bild said, and he patted my shoulder. Don’t worry about it. He didn’t mean nothing by it. I told him I didn’t give it a lot of thought, and he told me that if America can put a black man in the White House, Kenneth Branagh can put a black man in Asgard.

They’d sedated Johnny, and I fell asleep in a chair beside a nurses’ station down the hall from his room. I dreamed of Helen. We were standing in a familiar round room, featureless but for the pale luminescence of the walls. There was a sound like the sound of the hospitals in Oakland, although, it occurred to me, it might also be an engine. If he dies, she said, we’re in the hospital. A timing issue, I said. I’ve heard that before, she said. Is it true, I asked her, that you were the youngest artist-in-residence ever at artPace? Because even in my dreams, apparently, I’d been Googling the shit out of her. Everything is true, she said. I’ve heard that before, I told her. V’ayn kal hadash tachat ha’shamesh, she said. Huh? I said. Shh, she said, and she touched my face with her hand.

I woke up. A nurse had her hand on my shoulder. Hon, she said. Your friend is awake.

What time is it?

About five.

In the morning?

Yeah, sweetie. It’s the morning.

He was in a private room, a single IV dripping into his arm. He was staring into the middle distance, but when he saw me, his eyes focused on my face, and when they did, when he smiled, although I’d resolved to be angry, to be firm, to ask him just what the fuck he thought he was doing, I found that I had tears in my eyes. How did they get there? I touched them away with the back of my hand. You fucker, I said.

Hey, he said. His voice sounded like an engine with a bad starter. He smiled. His lips were cracked. Nice tie, he said.