THIS FACT CAN EVEN BE PROVED BY MEANS OF THE SENSE OF HEARING

Charlie Kaufman

I felt out of sorts, foggy and dull, the meat that was his brain was the wrong meat tonight, not his own. Someone else’s meat, perhaps. It was a brain to which he did not have full access. He had some access. He could lift his arm if he wanted, for example, and did, just to prove it, but his thoughts were somehow hidden from him. It felt close in there, in this foreign brain, stuffed, warm and airless and, somehow, dusty. He imagined watching himself from the outside, sitting before this sad, small audience. As if seeing myself in the third person, he thought, although not exactly that, as he was seeing through his own eyes and therefore not seeing himself at all, the way one can’t, which if he had been a person other than himself, a third person, he could have. It was perplexing. Of course, even in the first person he would be able to see his own body, the front of it, at least, as well as his face, were he to look at his reflection, which he couldn’t now, as there were no mirrors at this venue, and, anyway, he would’ve avoided them if there were, as he was unhappy with his face; he thought it ugly, and so he was relieved to be on the inside looking out. Although he imagined he probably wouldn’t much care that this face was ugly if it wasn’t his. It was all perplexing. Furthermore, as far as the whole third-person notion went, I. was clearly not written by an omniscient narrator, if it could be said I. was written at all, but rather by a subjective one, or rather a group of subjective narrators, a world of them. For I. seemed able to glean truths about himself only via the assessments of others, or rather his interpretation of the assessments of others, to whose brains he also had no access. What do they think of me, he wondered, as he looked out at those present tonight who were, currently, not regarding him at all but rather watching the interviewer read aloud a passage from his novel. He couldn’t hear her, or rather he couldn’t focus on what she was reading. It seemed distant and garbled, as if she were reading underwater at the far end of a swimming pool. So he scanned the audience’s faces. I. really wanted them to like this passage, whatever it was. But their faces were blank. They hate me, he imagined.

The interviewer finished, looked up.

“What exactly did you mean by that?” she asked.

As one, the audience’s heads pivoted to I.

Oh.

It was his turn to speak.

They were six altogether, this audience: a strait-laced older woman in a knotted neckerchief; an effete, beret-wearing young man; a broad-shouldered tough in a tan sports jacket, whom I. suspected might be an undercover policeman; a sailor in dress whites; an angry-looking, raven-haired (possible dye job?) woman in a traditional folk costume (possibly Latvian?); and a heavy-set lady surrounded by several full garbage bags, whom I. figured was homeless and there only to escape the weather. The group waited, impatiently, it seemed to him, for his response, and he understood they hoped he would fail. People were sharks, pouncing if they sensed weakness. No, sharks don’t pounce. And they sense blood, not weakness. His metaphor was off. This was just like him, he guessed. Still, it could be argued that excessive bleeding led to weakness, so perhaps a shark would indeed be able to sense—

The sailor coughed. I. was losing them. He hated the sailor most of all. Who did that sailor think he was in that stupid, impeccably tailored sailor suit?

“Could you repeat the question? I’m sorry. I was distracted. I had something in my eye. A crumb, perhaps,” he lied.

“I asked, what did you mean by that?”

A silence.

“Yes. I see. Right. Of course,” he said.

Another silence.

“By what exactly?” he asked.

“That passage.”

I. nodded vigorously and for a long time, then said, “Might you reread the passage, then? I was distracted by my eye crumb. As you know.”

This time, I. listened with laser focus.

“Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything around about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.”

The passage was completely foreign to him, as if he’d never heard it, let alone written it. Further, the idea expressed seemed insane, certainly nothing he would ever think. We all have a room inside us? I mean . . . Further, even the turns of phrase did not feel like his own. Although now that the idea of a room in one’s head was put into his head, inside him, as it were, it did feel familiar and terribly upsetting. He worried this room idea would fester in him, grow like a fungus, a giant fungal chamber, shadowy, dusty, airless, and made of mushroom meat. Nothing good could come of this. He felt afraid. Further, what was with “This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing”? A stilted slog from one end of that sentence to the other. Was his book translated into English? Why would he have written it in another language? He was unilingual, wasn’t he? Yes, he was, much to his embarrassment, and his unilanguage was, of course, English, although he had purchased a Spanish phrasebook just the other day or maybe last year in order to better himself. “Oh, you must be an American, then,” non-Americans always said to him when he, with embarrassment, admitted to speaking only English. And, yes, they were correct. He was indeed an American, this much he knew about himself. Although he didn’t feel like an American, or rather he didn’t feel like what he imagined it felt like to be an American. He imagined Americans felt proud to be an American, or rather he imagined that Americans who felt like an American felt proud of it. He guessed there were a lot of Americans who felt ashamed to be an American who didn’t feel like the Americans who felt proud to be one. Maybe there were some Americans who felt neither proud nor ashamed to be an American but recognized it as a mere accident of birth. That was, he decided, probably the mental-healthiest way to look at being anything or anyone. But he couldn’t manage that sort of detachment regarding this or any other of his attributes. He had to be ashamed of it because there were so many people who hated America, and justifiably so. So he was required by his nature to direct their hatred inward. Perhaps he could just say to the interviewer, since he had to say something (fourteen eyes upon him), that he hadn’t written that passage at all, that he would never write such a passage, and, in addition, in case anyone was wondering, he was ashamed to be an American. But how could he claim he didn’t write it? She was reading directly from his book. His book equals his passage. Wait. Could it be a trick? A prank? No, she wouldn’t do that. No one would do that. But then, he didn’t really know this interviewer. At least he didn’t think he did. Did he? His memory was failing him, that much he knew, or rather suspected. What if she were doing exactly that—a prank—and he were to fall right into her pranky trap by attempting to explain, as his own, this nonsensical passage which he hadn’t written and never would? That could be career-ending, even in front of a tiny audience of seemingly insignificant people. Maybe the audience was even in on it. Maybe they were actors. They did seem an oddly caricaturish bunch, in their various costumes. If experience taught him anything, it was that real book launch audiences were nondescript—jeans and T-shirts, maybe a sundress or two in the warmer months, the occasional glowing pregnant woman in something midriff-baring. In any case, even if they weren’t in on it, they would talk once the prank was revealed. People are out to get you. How could he possibly wriggle out of it when the interviewer revealed she had been pranking him? Could he say, “Yes, I know, and I was pranking you back? Psych!” No one would buy that. Perhaps he should ask to see the passage, then he could ascertain if it was indeed from his book and in the process buy himself a little time.

“May I take a look at that passage in your copy, por favor?” he asked, utilizing his Spanish while jabbing a brittle finger toward the interviewer’s lap, where an open copy of his book lay, “To refresh my memory.”

I. pictured how he must look from the outside, in the third person, as it were, speaking Spanish, pointing, and he worried it all appeared untoward, this aggressive bilingual stab of his finger toward her lap. It’s not that he was sexually attracted to her, although it’s not that he wasn’t, and he did love women’s laps. He couldn’t say why, but he suspected it calmed him to lay his head in a woman’s lap or to imagine doing so. Maybe it made him feel protected, the way laying one’s head in one’s mother’s lap would. That was probably mostly it. Not that he had ever lain his head in his mother’s lap. Theirs hadn’t been that type of relationship, as far as he could recall, which was not far at all. His childhood seemed impossibly distant, a blur, viewed underwater at the far end of a swimming pool.

The interviewer handed her book to him, and he saw that, yes, it was exactly as she had read it. Could it be she had pasted a false page into his novel? But why, why would she do that? Why would anyone do anything like that? It seemed more likely that he had just forgotten writing it. His memory was going; he remembered that much. Then again, you never know with people, especially in the literary world. Literary people were sharks. Still, he had to proceed, to get through this interview. There was nothing else for it.

“Ah. Yes,” he said. “Yes, now I see. That passage.”

What could anyone possibly say about that ludicrous passage? Nothing. But the only way out was through, as Robert Frost, or someone, had once said or written.

“It is,” he said, “metaphorical,” then looked over at her to see if that sufficed. It did not seem to. He glanced at the audience. Did it suffice for them? They were still blank—bored or angry, he guessed. He couldn’t tell which. It could’ve been both and even a third thing which he couldn’t identify.

“We, all of us,” he continued, riffing, trying to say many, many words to run out the hour, “carry within us an emptiness, do we not? For I imagine this imagined room, this room I imagined, as empty. That is the salient point here, is it not? Don’t you agree? How do we, each of us, move forward with this, our ‘empty room,’ for lack of a better word, or rather words, for ‘empty room’ is more than one word, is it not? Don’t you agree? I know I do.”

He looked over again. She was still waiting for more. He didn’t have any more. Against his will, he stole a glance at her lap, pictured his head in it. How peaceful it would be to wait out the hour there, in cozy silence. He couldn’t help looking. It was out of his control. Everything was out of his control. He lifted his arm again, just to check. Everyone saw both the lap glance and the arm lift. He was sure of it. On top of it all, he suddenly found himself worried his outfit was feminine, that the attendees would think him a dandy. Did his collar lie too flatly against his shirt? Were its edges unmasculinely rounded? A Peter Pan collar, he believed it to be. Why did he even know this? This brain was someone else’s. The Peter Pan collar was introduced by the actress Maude Adams in the 1905 Broadway production of Peter Pan. Why did he know that? Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. These were the thoughts of another, and of another he didn’t like. A coxcomb. Why was he wearing this shirt? Why did he even own it? Did he own this shirt? He tried to recall purchasing such a—

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying,” the interviewer said. “Perhaps if you could elabor—”

“Don’t you ever feel lonely?” I. spat. “I know I do.”

It was the wrong tone, aggressive, but he had had to stop her from talking. She had to stop talking. Everyone had to stop talking. Unfortunately, his tone felt as if he were accusing her, this woman he had only just met, probably, of not being there for him, of not loving him properly, of not welcoming his head into the very lap onto which she had so happily welcomed his book, the book he had written, he might add, his very brain in print, right there on her lap. Why would she so freely welcome his book there—which was his brain in print, was it not?—and not the very head that encased the very brain that wrote that very book?

Oh, he needed someone to love him.

But this wasn’t her fault.

It wasn’t her responsibility.

He tried to walk his tone back with a smile. He couldn’t see his face from inside his head where he found himself situated, nor did he want to, because he was ugly, but he worried this smile on the face part of his head was wrong, too broad and toothy for the reconciliation he had been attempting to communicate. He worried it might appear lecherous instead. He was too old and ugly to look like he was coming on to her. She would be repulsed, justifiably, as would the audience. Then all of them would disperse to share the news of his aged repulsiveness with a vindictive world. And he would be ruined.

“Certainly,” she acknowledged, “but—”

“Well, that is your empty room, then. There it is,” he said, and bowed.

Bowing was wrong, too. He knew it the moment he did it. It was an instinct but turned out to be a bad one. His instincts were bad. They weren’t even his instincts. Someone else was pulling the strings. He lifted his arm, almost imperceptibly this time, secretly, just to check again. Everything was wrong.

The interviewer looked at her watch, which he witnessed. He witnessed it! She didn’t even try to hide it. What was with her? It seemed unfair, her conspicuous disdain for him. Why did she even take this job if she hated him so much?

“Listen, it’s a metaphor, but it’s also scientifically sound,” he snapped, not meaning to sound snappy, but rather to sound equanimous, if that were a word. He wasn’t clear anymore. Equaniminous, perhaps?

“I don’t know what you mean,” the interviewer said.

“Well, as you do know, we all carry within us neural maps of the various environments we inhabit. For instance, when we close our eyes, we can all picture our homes, their layouts, the placement of our furniture, what have you. That’s how we are able to find our way to the bathroom at night, in the dark. Yes? So what I’m suggesting is that the room inside us, were we to examine it, would reveal itself to be a mental configuration of the place in which we live.”

He turned to the audience, proudly, tried to curb his instinct to bow once again, failed, and bowed.

“All of you should try it. You’ll see. Close your eyes. C’mon, everyone! It’s fun!”

I. had no idea if this neural map thing were true. It just came to him, and he said it. It seemed true. In any event, no one closed their eyes. They mostly looked down at the floor. The raven-haired Latvian didn’t look down; she glared at him. And the interviewer just seemed like she wanted to leave.

“I suppose,” she said, “but how does that pertain to your novel?”

“How do you mean?” I. asked, stalling again. “I don’t know how you mean.” He felt an urge to bring up the eye crumb once more, for sympathy, but wasn’t sure it was still pertinent.

“It just seems unlikely to me that I., being homeless, would have a map of a home inside him.”

I. had no idea who I. was, other than himself. There was, as far as he knew, no I. in his book, and certainly no homeless person. Everyone in the book had homes. That was a major point of the novel.

“I disagree,” he said, flipping through his own copy of the book, forced-casual, only to discover that a character called I. appeared multiple times on nearly every page. He learned, also, that, just as the interviewer had said, I. was homeless.

Oh, come on, he thought.

Then he remembered, in a near panic, the homeless woman in the audience. Would she take offense at his depiction of homelessness, whatever that depiction was? He was no expert in homelessness and would never deign to depict it at all, especially in front of an expert such as herself. He had no idea what he had said about homelessness in this novel, which didn’t seem to be the novel he thought he had written. It could be inaccurate. It was most definitely going to be inaccurate, not to mention offensive, the way the night was going. But, as Robert Frost or someone had advised him, he had to get through this . . . interrogation, for that was what this interview had become.

“Well, certainly I. is homeless,” he said. “But maybe he wasn’t always.”

He paused, held his breath, waited for the interviewer to correct him. She looked about to speak but didn’t, obviously over the whole thing now. So he continued.

“And this is the home I. carries with him, his former home. Although I could argue and do, in a way, that it’s this internal room that sustains him, his memory of a better time.”

“But doesn’t that fly in the face of your just-stated point that the room represents loneliness, if it also represents a better time?”

“Not at all,” I. said, without elaboration.

There was a long silence. I. looked out at the crowd again, imploringly. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from them. Maybe just a kind nod, a wink of encouragement. No one gave him either. The sailor’s eyes were closed. Perhaps he was attempting I.’s experiment. I. instantly felt more warmly toward both him and his outfit.

“You can be alone and have a good time. It’s not all bad,” he yelled.

The interviewer nodded, studying her notes. She couldn’t even look at him anymore.

“The Portuguese have a word for it,” he continued. “They call it sagagiagio,” hoping this were the word, half-remembering reading it on some list of words that had no direct correlation in English.

The interviewer nodded again or maybe she was still nodding from before, still pretending to study her notes.

“So, I’d love to talk a bit about your use of autofiction,” she said, now almost inaudible.

“Certainly, all novelists use the raw materials of their lives in their fiction. It is unavoidable, or rather inavoidable, but to characterize that as autofiction seems a bit, well, I mean, just a little, kind of . . . after a fashion . . . as well you know . . . and furthermore . . .” I. trailed off. He had hoped to be interrupted by the interviewer, by the sailor coughing, by anything. But there came only one more terrible silence.

“Still,” said the interviewer eventually, “you go so far as to call the protagonist by your own name and include, within the body of the novel, all the information that appears in your author bio on the back cover, not to mention your home address, phone number, and family genealogical chart.”

“Listen, it is a literary device. I. is not me. We are different people. I don’t feel the need to defend the practice of autofiction, when I am not practicing it.”

“Nor am I asking you to. I simply thought that since you seem to lean so heavily into this . . . device, with passages such as: ‘There is no difference between I. and me. There, I said it. I have bled my blood, and with it my very DNA, onto the page and what results is myself rendered fully in ink in this very book that rests on your lap. Everything about I., from his humiliating thoughts to his stilted writing, seemingly inexplicably in translation, is me. So don’t believe me, if, at some future date, I publicly deny this. The novel itself is an admission of my guilt.’”

I. was struck dumb. He hadn’t written that. Guilt? Of what was he supposedly guilty? It wasn’t even his book anymore. It was someone else’s guilt. God knows whose. God knows what was admitted to in it. There must have been some error at the printers, he suddenly realised. A mix-up, like babies switched at a hospital. That kind of thing happened. In fact, he had just read that very morning about a case of babies switched at a local hospital. And of a similar case of switched babies at another hospital, some distance away, just last week. He should have checked the book when it came out. Why didn’t he? But he did, no? He felt certain he flipped through one of the copies the publisher sent him. And of what was he guilty, anyway? To what did he admit?

“It’s called autofiction, not autofact,” he said triumphantly, this time with no need of a bow.

“Indeed,” said the interviewer and then opened it up for questions. There was only one, this from the Latvian.

“Does a woman have a room inside her as well?”

“Yes, of course,” he explained. “By ‘him,’ I meant ‘him or her.’”

“Why didn’t you write ‘him or her,’ then?”

“It is understood,” I. explained.

“Why must women always be the ones to understand? Why can’t you say, ‘Everyone carries a room about inside her,’ and then men can understand?”

“No one would understand that,” I. said.

The raven-haired woman looked him up and down for a long moment and stormed out.

The interviewer thanked I. and thanked the audience for coming.

Three people purchased the novel, which he signed for them in his now unfamiliar loopy cursive at a small, collapsible sighing, or rather signing, table. Not a bad haul, considering. Fifty percent of the audience. The neckerchief woman came up and revealed herself to be his high school girlfriend. He couldn’t place her, and her name rang no bell. She reminisced about the time they had attended a Halloween costume party together dressed as a horse. He was the front and had repeatedly passed gas in her face. Everyone at the signing table laughed. I. was humiliated, but certain this had never happened. Anyone who had been in a two-person horse costume would remember it, not to mention remember having repeatedly passed gas within it. If this had happened, he would’ve awakened hundreds of times in the middle of the night over the years to relive that mortification. He had always been very discreet with his gas passing. In fact, L., his former wife, often said she had not once heard him pass gas in the twenty-odd years of their marriage, an accomplishment of which I. was extremely proud. Neckerchief’s story made no sense and, to top it off, after all that, she did not buy one of his books. Why did she even come, this person he couldn’t remember, this liar? He packed his bag, shook the interviewer’s hand, glanced down at her crotch—damn it!—and was out of the venue onto the street.

Night. Chilly. Crowds of pretty, giant young people cavorting, proud in their giant, cute outfits. This was not their street; it was his. They had not yet been born when he first cavorted on these streets, proud in his own cute, although smaller, outfits. These were his streets by rights, but he was too old to be on them. He was too old to be anywhere. Nothing felt good anymore; nothing felt like anything these days.

He found himself behind the homeless woman pushing a shopping cart piled with her bags. Should he acknowledge her? He thought it proper to, even though she had been at the launch only to get out of the cold. But she was, after all, a person, just like himself, and should be treated as such. This was how we could make the world a better place.

“Thank you for coming to my book launch,” he said magnanimously as he passed.

“I’ve long admired your writing,” she said.

He slowed, surprised, pulled a twenty from his wallet, and handed it to her. Immediately, he felt it was the wrong thing to have done. Maybe he should ask for it back, say he hadn’t meant to assume she wanted or, more to the point, needed money (because everyone wanted money!), that he hadn’t meant to insult her, that it was an accident. But there was no comfortable way to do this. Now he was stuck walking next to her. And she walked at a snail’s pace (no, snails don’t walk; they contract and expand). He guessed that, unlike him, she had nowhere to be. He had somewhere to be—home—and always liked to walk at a clip—he was known for it—however, it seemed rude to just speed off after he had possibly insulted her. So he adjusted his gait, which was torture, and tried to think of something to say.

“I’m glad you like my work,” he said. “Do you have a favorite?”

Such a stupid thing to say. Do you have a favorite? What was he, nine?

“I loved Drowning in His Soup,” she said. “I don’t have this new one yet, so I can’t say if I’d like it more. But it sounds fascinating. I’m glad you tackle the unhoused.”

Unhoused! Right, of course, unhoused! He’d been thinking the wrong word all this time. Wasn’t that the interviewer’s fault, though? Didn’t she refer to the unhoused as “homeless”? This was her fault.

“A long time coming in your work,” said the unhoused woman, “given how much you write about making the world a better place.”

He nodded—did he write about that?—reached into his bag, and pulled out a copy of his book. Maybe he should offer to sell it to her for twenty dollars. That way he could get his twenty back and leave everybody with their dignity. But the book cost twenty-five. Could he ask her for twenty-five dollars? Then he would be taking five dollars from a possibly unhoused person, which didn’t seem right. But he didn’t want to insult her with a discount. It said twenty-five dollars right there on the inside jacket; she would know. He would just give her a copy as a thank-you. It was the only thing to do.

“I can’t with complete confidence recommend this book, but I’d like you to have a copy, if you want. As a thank-you.”

“Oh! How nice. Could you make it out to I., please?”

“Just like me,” I. said, now impossibly exhausted with everything.

“I think that’s how I discovered you, because of our names being the same.”

I. made the book out to I., handed it to I. I. stuffed it into one of her bags.

“I like how you use the Kafka bit,” she said.

“The Kafka bit?”

“The ‘room we carry inside’ business.”

“That’s Kafka? Oh! Yes, exactly, Kafka. Franz Kafka. I’m impressed you caught that.”

“From the Kaiser and Wilkins translation of The Blue Octavo Notebooks, right? I’m somewhat disappointed R. didn’t know.”

“R.?”

“The interviewer.”

“Oh! Right. R., yes. The interviewer. Lovely woman, R. Although I had issues with her.”

“She clearly hadn’t done her homework. You were correct not to hold her hand through the conversation. I liked how you were pranking her by making up some garbage to explain the room. I kept myself from laughing because I didn’t want to give away your delectable ruse. But it was brilliant. The idiotic stuff you spouted! Not just then, but through the entire conversation! Completely idiotic! It was a thing of beauty!”

“Thank you,” I. said.

Had he been stealing from Kafka? He had never read this Octaviato whatever whatever. Had he? He was certain he had never heard of it. But his memory was going. He understood that much. If this unhoused woman knew it was from Kafka, someone else would, too. Were there other stolen things in the book? This was going to ruin him.

He claimed to have a previous engagement, or rather an impending engagement, but that it was lovely meeting her, and hurried on ahead, worried that his behind looked silly as he speed-walked away in his jodhpurs. It was wrong to leave her, but what was he supposed to do, spend the entire night with her? She wasn’t his date. Was she? No, almost certainly not. Anyway, he had to figure out how to deal with the coming accusations of plagiarism.

Why was he wearing jodhpurs?

And what the hell was Drowning in His Soup?

As he hurried home, against his will, I. played over his interaction with I. It had been all wrong. What would have been a better, fuller, more humane interaction with this person? He had found himself surprised at how well-spoken she was, that she had read his previous work or at least work that seemed to have his name on it. Drowning in His Soup? He was ashamed of the assumptions he had made about her. Out of respect or penance, he attempted to fully imagine her life, what it was day to day, where she slept, what dreams she had, how people treated her. He couldn’t. He couldn’t even fully remember how he had treated her. He was a failure as a humanitarian.

He arrived at his building to find his key didn’t fit in the lock.

Oh.

He tried again. The rain was coming down hard now. He tried it again, peered into the keyhole. Had someone perhaps jammed something in there? A toothpick? A paper clip? A raisin? A crumb? The keyhole seemed clear. He sat on the stoop, flummoxed, soaked. He tried the door again. This made no sense. The café on the corner, his favorite, he suspected, was open until eleven, he believed. He would sit there and dry off. He couldn’t think while wet. This had always been the case with him, even as a child.

It was too late to have coffee. So he ordered a slice of carrot cake which featured a cute orange-and-green-icing carrot on top, then checked his bag to see if the copies of his book were soaked. A little damp, but salvageable. He pulled one out. He needed to know what he had written, what he might have to say to defend himself against charges of plagiarism. The book was, he noticed, dedicated to M.

Now and forever. You have made the impossible possible, the unlovable loved, the lost found, the homeless unhoused.

He racked his brain. M? He had known an M. in grade school. A sad, pale boy. Children would pick their noses and wipe their boogers on his shirt while pretending to pat him on the back in fellowship. Could it be that M.? They hadn’t been close. M. had written a little poem in I.’s end-of-school-year autograph book, which read:

I am not a poit

And I have no fame

But please allow me

To sign my name.

I. had been upset that M. misspelled poet. This had ruined his entire autograph book. He really wanted to correct it—simple enough to change the i into an e—but he knew that was petty and would be unfair to the purity of M.’s sentiment, M., who was bullied and covered in boogers. So he left poit. The misspelling haunted I. all summer. He could never fully forgive M. for ruining his book. So it was most likely not that M.

He read from Chapter One:

I. felt out of sorts, foggy and dull, the meat that was his brain was the wrong meat tonight, not his own meat. Someone else’s, perhaps.

This was not how his book began—his book was about commercial fishermen—but it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. It felt true somehow, although not precisely in his voice. He continued:

It was a brain to which he did not have full access. He had some access. He could lift his arm if he wanted, for example, and did, just to prove that he could . . .

Unconsciously, as he read, I. lifted his arm.

. . . but his thoughts were somehow hidden from him. It felt dull in there, in this foreign brain, warm and airless and, somehow, dusty. He imagined watching himself from the outside . . .

I. pictured himself now in this very café, soaking wet, confused, ugly, lifting his arm which was also ugly, but covered, thankfully. A group of attractive young women in crop halters watched him and whispered. He just wanted to go home. Why couldn’t he go home? What was happening here? Then, a thought. He flipped through the book until he found his supposed address, phone number and genealogical chart. They weren’t his address, phone number, and genealogical chart, but nothing was making sense tonight. He called the phone number. A voice message answered: We’re not able to come to the phone right now. Please leave a message after the tone.

It sounded like his voice, he thought. He left a message:

“It’s I. This is a test.”

I. made his way through the rain to novel I.’s address. There, his key easily turned the front-door lock, and he made his way to I.’s apartment, where the other key on his ring easily turned that lock.

The apartment was empty, as if no one lived there. A single room, warm and airless and dusty, with a mirror fastened to one wall. As I. stepped inside, the mirror rattled. He found himself staring for a bit out one of the two windows into the night, at the rain. He discovered he liked the emptiness of the place. His other apartment, his real apartment, was stuffed with memories, all the furniture and doodads and books, artefacts of a sad marriage and all the terrible mistakes he had made, the burdens he had buckled under. This new place wasn’t exactly a fresh start, as the paint was peeling and it was dirty and smelled of mildew, but it was without those constant reminders. The answering machine on the floor next to the phone was blinking. He pressed the playback button.

“It’s E. This is a test.”

He was fairly certain that was not what he said earlier. It seemed unlike him, contrary to his philosophy of life, and a bit hysterical. Nothing is a test, he always said, because if it is, then who exactly is the quizmaster? This usually shut people up. And wasn’t his name I.? Why did the answering machine say “E.”? In any event, now that he was beginning to dry off, he could think more clearly. It was a nice place, nicer than his previous one. He would order a bed in the morning. Maybe some saucepans and cutlery. But would he? Could he? This wasn’t his apartment. It was becoming difficult to keep his thinking straight, even though he was now fully dry. The keys worked here. The keys didn’t work at the other apartment. This was the address he had listed in his book. But wasn’t that just fiction, even if it were of the auto variety? Clearly he was not unhoused, as was the I. in the book. Or was it E. who was unhoused? Wait, was the unhoused E. of the book the unhoused woman he met tonight? But the E. in the book was male. He looked down at the penis hanging between his legs. When had he removed his clothes? To dry off? He couldn’t recall, and moved from the window, ashamed of his nakedness. Granted, gender is fluid, he mused as he slipped back into his underwear—was this his underwear? It seemed different. Did his have so many buttons and zippers?—and sat on the couch—was there a couch before?—opened the novel—which was now called Bebop Botox Blues—to a random page and attempted to read. He couldn’t focus, as his underwear was off again and the gray velvet upholstery, warm and soft on his balls, titillated him. Then, a moment of panicked clarity: whose couch was this, really? Who sat on it naked before him? With whose possibly diseased genitalia was his genitalia now comingling? But then against his will he relaxed, settled into the velvet and felt, perhaps for the first time in his life, adventurous and whole. He read:

E., luxuriating nakedly on her new velvet couch, finally out of the weather, read from the novel that the elderly author had sold her for twenty dollars. “Things change suddenly, inexplicably. One day a dark spot appears on your skin. Or was it always there? Or did it appear gradually, darkening over time, like the gradual darkening of night, only you didn’t notice it at first, because you weren’t paying attention, because you didn’t take the time to look, and then one day the spot was so dark that it had become impossible to miss. The conservation of matter tells us the dark spot has always existed somewhere in the universe in some form. This can be comforting if you don’t consider that in its present form it might foretell your death.”

E. looked up from the passage. Another bit he did not remember writing. He was going to be in terrible trouble if this, too, was stolen. And they knew where to find him, the authorities. The book would lead them to him. Plagiarism was a crime. He knew this because he’d researched it for this novel, or at least the version he thought he’d written, the one about the commercial fisherman who moonlighted—or rather moonlit—as a plagiarist. One could be fined up to a quarter of a million dollars for plagiarism. One could be sentenced to prison for up to ten years for plagiarism. E.’s protagonist, Saunders Mucklebackit, had been accused of it by Santiago, another fisherman author, who claimed Mucklebackit had stolen his work, then aged his version of the manuscript with tea to make the paper appear older than Santiago’s.

Anyway, what creature, if not a shark, does look for weakness and then pounce, E. wondered. Man! Of course! Or, rather, human, so as not to offend that Latvian woman.

The sound of a key in the lock.

The apartment door swung open to reveal the Latvian woman.

Oh.

She and E. regarded each other silently, suspiciously.

“E.” She nodded, then stepped in, closed the door, crossed to the abattoir, or rather the armoire, opened it, wriggled out of her soaking Latvian dress, which she left in a pile on the floor as she donned her robe. Had there been an abattoir—or rather armoire—there previously? He couldn’t recall. The Latvian opened a window, lit a cigarette, stared out at the rain. E. knew he had to say something, but what? What could he say to this stranger?

“How was the Gatves deja tonight?”

“It was fine. Whatever. I lost my trīdeksnis. I looked like an idiot, shaking my empty hand.”

It wasn’t the first time she had lost her trīdeksnis, and E. found himself utilizing his neural map, going through all the places she might have left it: on the bookcase, behind the newspapers piled on the desk, in the cabinet under the television. He thought he might’ve seen it there earlier and he headed toward the TV.

“Just . . . don’t look for it now. Please,” she said irritably. “There’s no point. I don’t need it now.”

He stopped, sighed.

“Please don’t be mad about the passage,” he said.

She remained silent for a bit, dragged on her cigarette.

“You knew how I felt,” she said.

And she was right; he did. How, though? How any of this?

“But here’s the thing: gender is fluid,” he said.

“What does that even mean in this context?”

“‘Gender is fluid’ means something in every context. I thought we agreed on that. Besides, I just found out I didn’t even write the damn thing.”

“The passage?”

“Apparently, I stole it. From Kafka.”

“You never told me you stole it from Kafka. You never tell me anything.”

Her eyes welled up.

“Nothing in this this book is familiar. Although it’s becoming more familiar as I have been reading it tonight. I can’t tell if that’s because I remember writing it or am remembering reading it tonight.”

“We’ve been arguing about that goddamn passage for two years,” she said, and seemed heartbroken.

He found a tomato on the kitchenette counter. Bright red, shiny, perfect. There was no other food in the apartment. He cut it open with the only knife there, silver, sharp, shiny, perfect. Inside, the tomato was white and hard, solid with the vague imprint of the inside of a tomato. It was nauseating.

“The tomato has gone bad,” he said.

“It’s that terrible market,” she said, somewhat dreamily. “This city is filled with terrible markets. What can a woman do? And by woman, I mean person.”

“I wonder if I should eat it anyway.”

“If it’s brown, put it down. If it’s red, go ahead.”

“It’s white.”

“If it’s white, take a bite.”

He did; spat it out.

“The consistency of grout.”

“Tastes like grout? Spit it out.”

“I did.”

“Good boy.”

And he felt proud. He realized he loved her and had for a very long time. She was, of course, M. His M., M. who made the unlovable lovable.

The telephone rang. M. looked over. E. stared at it, now atop a small-size table, or rather a small side table. He knew he had to answer but couldn’t. He did.

“Hello?”

“I found this number in your novel,” the voice said.

“Yes?”

“I’m the broad-shouldered tough in a tan sports jacket.”

“Okay.”

“I was in the audience for your book launch earlier. I may be an undercover policeman.”

“Yes.”

There was a silence.

“Can I help you?” E. said.

“I’ve been reading your book. I bought a copy after, as you may recall.”

“Yes. I recall. Of course I recall.”

Another long silence. E. found himself frightened.

“The book raises questions.”

“What do you mean?”

“The things you admit to are extremely—”

“It is autofiction,” E. interrupted. “Emphasis on ‘fiction,’ mister.”

“Yes,” said the man. “Still, there are things only the perpetrator would know.”

More silence as E. gathered his courage.

“Perpetrator of what?”

But there was just a dial tone.

E. stood there, holding the receiver. M. watched from the couch.

“Come,” she said. “Rest your head in my lap.”

There was nothing E. wanted more, but he had to read, had to find out what he had admitted to.

“Can I read the book with my head in your lap?”

“Lay your head, close your eyes. I’ll read it to you.”

E. hung up the phone and, with gratitude, made his way to her.

M. read.

I am soaked, wandering the streets. Simply by existing I have caused damage. I have tried to change. I have changed, but it doesn’t make it better. It has been said by men wiser than I that one cannot live without killing. I haven’t wanted to kill. I consider myself peaceful, peace-loving. I have tried to be kind, but even in my clumsy attempts at kindness I have caused pain.

“Does it really say that?”

“Is it untrue?”

“It’s starting to sound familiar. Keep reading.”

“I’ll change,” I cry. “I’ll change. But the one thing I can’t change, or rather don’t, is that I don’t tell anyone who I really am. I want to be alive, to be free, but I know that I am uranium and, for the good of all, I must stay within the lead casing that is my skull. I’ve always known this, or at least for as long as I can recall. And I recall encouraging others to paint pretty, colorful pictures on my lead casing, which I display with pride.”

E. looked around the room, his home, his prison. The split tomato sat on the counter surrounded now by a box of pasta, a lemon, an open bag of pistachios. The drawers were full of cutlery, the cabinets piled with dishes that had been dirtied and washed and dirtied and washed and dirtied and washed a thousand times. He knew this without opening the cabinets, without lifting his head from M.’s lap as she read to him from the novel he had written. The bookshelves—some of the books there he had read, most he had not. The Blue Octavo Notebooks was there. He knew that passage was underlined. He remembered his familiar loopy scribble in the margin. “Use this!” it read.

M. continued reading, her voice swam around E., describing leisurely curlicues. The story shifted and shifted again. It shimmered, turned inside out, the words meaning something new and then meaning nothing, as E. walked through a field of junked cars. A man in a blue T-shirt carried a too-long ladder. Afraid, E. jumped into a rusted car, one so small he had to sit crouched. Sky darkened. Rain? No, just night arriving. Blinded by darkness, the man with the ladder banged it clumsily against various cars. The banging got closer. If he banged the ladder against E.’s car, I. would die. It was a superstitious game E. played, but it was also true. He squinted into the blackness, searching for the ladder man, shoving greasy fast food from a paper bag into his mouth. The car was now moving, slowly, and the black night became a darkened basement. A party. Sailor was there, with a drawn-on mustache. Effete young man in his beret was there, also with a mustache, but his made of hair. Crowd parted as the car pushed through. Then E. passed gas again and again, looked behind to see neckerchief in the back seat, a teenager here, but at the same time fifty, disgusted. Humiliated, E. climbed from the car, which had become a horse costume, ran up the stairs, out of the house. Was he galloping? He could never go back.

E. awoke mortified, having relived that high school horse costume incident in his dream, just as he had awakened mortified about it hundreds of times in the past. What a waste of mortification, he realized, judging by the reaction of the small audience present and then gone. Nothing. A fart. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling. L., his high school girlfriend, had smelled the shameful stench that came from within him. His life had been hiding. He stared at the ceiling.

M. was gone and the room was empty. He knew she and the furnishings would return and be gone again. Sometimes they would arrive as shadows, sometimes as if he could touch them. He knew the mistakes he carried in this life were no easier to carry than the ones from the other. He knew he both loved M. and had never seen her before tonight. He knew he had been I. before E. and would be I. again. Then E., then I., then E., then I.

Oh.

The mirror rattled once again, offering itself, as he tiptoed to the open window. Outside was black, but it wasn’t night that made it so. He felt an intense heat, smelled blood, smelled flesh.

He could lift his arm to touch this wall of meat pressing into the room, but he didn’t.