Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I decided that my day was done.
I needed therapy.
I needed attention.
I needed something that could turn this chaos into sense.
I needed TV.
Kind, soft words.
Soothing dramas to let me escape.
Simplicity and closure.
Home.
I spent 15 minutes flipping channels.
“We have way too much cable,” came from Andrew, sitting beside me on the sofa.
Actually, I was sitting beside him. He’d been there when I got home, just staring at a black screen.
“No. There’s your fatal mistake. We don’t have enough cable.”
“I am well aware of your opinions on the topic. 157 channels is, obviously, not enough. Has it occurred to you, in your dire quest to find the perfect entertainment, in your almost psychopathic need to watch all there is, that there are channels that you’ve never watched yet?”
“Yes, well, I’ll admit that perhaps we don’t need 12 sports channels, 3 of which are devoted to ‘classic’…”
“’Historic’”
“’Historic’ games. I didn’t say that all the channels were good. Just that we don’t have enough.”
“Do tell.”
“If I can watch a show on each channel in a week, we don’t have anywhere near enough.”
“Is this your view from a professional stance, attempting to increase your market base, or your personal opinion?”
“Yes.”
“Look, this is man talking to man. You know, stories around the campfire taking place way over the mountains.”
“You’ve been listening to people at the coffee shop again, haven’t you.”
“I think I like you better in one of your other states.”
“Yes. But this is who I am now. If you must, at least turn on the news.”
“Done.”
I flipped on one of the 23 around-the-clock news channels.
The two anchors were going on about some political event in France. I didn’t really understand what it meant. My ears were hearing the story. My brain was getting something else.
“Andrew, the guy on the left. He just said something about eating too much fast food.”
“No. He said the Prime Minister was considering abolishing the Value Added Tax.”
“No, I mean yes, but he’s saying something else. THERE! Did you get that?”
“He pointed with two fingers at the chart showing all VAT compliant countries.”
“Yes. He’s worried that his wife will find out and there’ll be a big fight. There! I think its…the color of his jacket and the way his upper lip keeps pulling a bit to the left.”
“I understand that discussions on VAT are not particularly interesting and that making up your own dialog may be more fun. But you turned on BBC, not me.”
“I’m not making it up. I don’t know how, not exactly, but everything he’s doing is telling these things to me.”
“His body language? You can see that in his body language?”
“Not just his body language. Like I said, his clothes, his hair, the timber of his voice.”
“This is very odd.”
“Its sort of been happening all day.”
“You’ve been watching news all day?”
“Yes, Andrew. I’ve been tele-stalking this gentleman for 16 hours. No, I meant I’ve been hearing things that I shouldn’t hear. When I was at lunch, it was like all the conversations going on around me were meshing together to form one whole sentence. But I couldn’t quite hear it. Oh, and I had a 15 minute conversation with Dennis before we even had it.”
Andrew thought about that for a while.
“It sounds to me like you may have passed out of my ability to understand. If you’d like, I can suggest some medications that might help. By the way, people who hear voices…”
“Yes, yes, I know, subvocalizing. I’ve had this discussion before.”
“You talked with me about this before? Just now?”
”No, no, Dennis told me. He implied the same thing you are.”
“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then maybe it is. Maybe you should be taking the advice.”
“Maybe.”
I thought about the duck in my dream.
“Well, so far, nothing has told me to kill the child next door, or release toxic gas into the neighborhood.”
“Yet.”
“Your attempts to comfort me will not go forgotten. I’ll be surely adding you to my list.”
“You are keeping a list?”
“Dammit, Andrew. We can either be serious about this or we can joke around. It doesn’t matter to me which. Kindly pick one and run with it.”
“I’ve been serious this whole time. If you are hearing voices, if something is telling you things, feeding you information, then its only a matter of time.”
“But I’m absolutely certain that I’m right about everything I’ve been saying. I do NOT know how, but I’m telling you there’s no doubt in my mind about this.”
“Have you ever met anyone more certain than a crazy person? That’s what makes them crazy.”
“Fuck. Now my head hurts. I’m going to take a nap.”
“Sudden mood changes and headaches. Yes.”
*
At least the damn thing wasn’t talking anymore.
But I’m telling you, riding a duck along a lake isn’t anywhere near as comfortable as it might seem. The fact is that ducks are just too plump to wrap your legs around like a horse, and too narrow to just sit on safely.
All in all, though, I’ve had worse dreams.
The glowing pink trees were whistling pleasantly as they always do at the height of spring and the zebras were trying to hide behind them, to little avail. Black and white doesn’t blend that well with ANYTHING that shade of neon.
When the baseball team finally finished signing autographs, it became very quiet.
The breeze stopped blowing.
The trees stopped whistling.
And the duck stopped paddling.
The lake was completely calm and serene.
Glass.
Mirror-like.
I pulled out a straight razor and used a little of the mallard’s down as shaving cream.
Hey, he had plenty. He’d never miss it.
I shaved off a surprisingly large amount of facial hair, especially since it had only been a day since my last shave. I guess my testosterone was really in surplus at the moment. I’d never grown 2 inches of beard in 24 hours.
More significantly, it had never been made out of moss.
But it left my skin nice and smooth.
I checked myself in the lake and looked good.
Damn good.
Next time, I’d bring Megan.
Damn it.
I’d cut my neck.
I touched the wound and a droplet of amber blood fell into the water, disrupting the mirror effect completely.
I guess ducky thought it was a bit of bread or a bug or something and dipped underwater, tail up.
And took me with him.
And that’s when I saw them all.
Thousands of little gnomes working like crazy.
They were building what seemed like random structures and towers.
And they were building them VERY quickly, like watching a documentary about the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in time-lapse.
“Jesus, guys, whats all the rush? It’s the weekend, and I’ve got a duck!”
“Well, Billy,” which, according to my name tag was me,” we gotta keep up. If we don’t, the lake’ll fall down!”
“Oh, ok, then keep up the good work.”
“Want a candy cane?”
“No thanks.”
Ducky popped back up.
We both shook ourselves dry.
Then he took off with me still on him.
From the sky, I could see the lake, still see our reflections, but also the gnomes.
It was funny.
It looked like one of the structures had a string attached to our reflection.
*
My rejuvenating nap turned into a 12 hour coma. Disoriented, I staggered downstairs and flipped on the TV. I surfed the channels until hitting some porn. We didn’t subscribe to any of the porn channels, much to my annoyance. I assumed it must be a glitch and thanked the cable god.
“I don’t like my new alarm clock,” I told Andrew as he came downstairs.
“Why?”
“It doesn’t have two alarms. So I have to remember to reset it every time I take a nap.”
“And after spending 10 dollars on it. The shoddiness of American design these days. For shame.”
“It was all they had at the time.”
“You could get a new one.”
“But this one works.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that you purchase a broken one. Nor was I advocating that we go and find the dump where the bag you put the old one in was taken. They do sell ones that work.”
“Yes. But for how long? For how long?”
“Martin, what are you doing?”
Andrew was making an annoying habit of catching me with erections.
“I am watching porn, Andrew. If you leave me be, I’ll be doing something more soon.”
“First, I’d like to thank you for granting me a mental image that can replace the unfortunate plumbing scene that been in my head for days. Second, you are not watching porn. You are watching snow. Static.”
“No. I’m watching porn and wondering if the blond is going to hurry up and get the redhead naked. I believe she’s an undercover cop, but the storyline is surprisingly complex.”
“No. You are watching snow.”
He smacked the back of my head sharply.
I saw static on the screen.
“What did you do to the TV?? It was just getting good!”
“So we now have reached concensus on our viewing choices?”
“Yes.”
I could still see half-images of the impending girl-on-girl scene.
And I had an idea. I reached for the phone and started dialing.
“Who are you calling at 3am?”
“The cable company.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the cable. We don’t get this channel and for obvious reasons. Actually, for reasons becoming more obvious tonight.”
“Shut up. I need to…Yes. Hello. I want to sign up for whatever package gets me channel 221. No. I don’t need the Super Adult Package. No. Yes. Please. Thanks.”
“I don’t understand why you aren’t just putting in one of your DVDs. Our cable bill is already beyond excessive.”
“Wait for it.”
In a moment, the picture cleared again. Well, again for me.
“See? Blond. Redhead. Girl-on-girl.”
“Yes, indeed. I am certain that this is a most unique situation for the Steam Channel.”
“Granted. Watch with me for a few minutes.”
“I’ve been told that, normally, this can be a bonding experience.”
“True. Hows it working out for you?”
“Not so bonding.”
“If we’re lucky, we’ll get the bondage later.”
“You sure you don’t want a couple of pipes?”
“No, thanks, I’ll wait til later.”
We shifted into an awkward silence.
Until 5 minutes later the blond pulled out a badge.
“See? SEE? I told you! It wasn’t snow! I was watching it! Ha! HA HA! What do you say now Mr. ‘I’m Crazy So You Must Be Crazy’? What do you say NOW?”
“Hm.”
“Indeed.”
HAH!

I woke up again around noon, still in front of the TV. Andrew was still awake.
“I’ve been thinking about last night.”
“Yes. It was special for me too.”
“Thanks. My first time, you know. I hope I did alright.”
“You were wonderful.”
We paused to let the humorous-turned-awkward moment pass.
“I want to try something. Watch the TV.”
I turned to the box.
Andrew starting flipping channels quickly. Very quickly. Not even half a second on each station When we got back to the first channel, he stopped.
“Now, what did you see?”
“You scanning through channels very quickly.”
“Hah. Tell me whats on TV?”
I knew.
“Michelle was about to break up with Darren because he was actually the guy who killed her brother. Adam is two seconds away from walking in on his wife talking with his best friend and he’s going to interprete that as them having an affair. Hilarity will ensue. A purple dog is going to come very close to catching his nemesis, but the trap won’t work because of a broken spring and he’ll end up catching his master instead. Tomorrow, it’ll be 58 and cloudy. Miyoko Sakai nailed the triple lutz and will get near perfect scores. The forensic team on Crime And Justice is analyzing the blood samples that will show the break-in was done by the mayor’s brother…”
“Amazing. Quite astounding. Now, what did you REALLY see? What was in all that?”
“Um, TV is, mostly, tripe? I’m not really in the mood for Media Criticism 305 this morning.”
“No. You told me what was on, what was going on. Which, as I said, is amazing in and of itself. Now tell me what you saw.”
The after-images floated about in my head. I let them. I relaxed. Let them mix into a pond of pictures. I floated on them. Quack Quack.
“The owner of Classic Movies is about to sign a deal to make video games. The Prime Minister of Israel is going to step down. Some producer’s little boy is sick and probably dying. The lead actor on Crime And Justice is going to divorce his wife.”
“None of that was on the TV.”
“No it wasn’t. But that’s what it all said to me. All together. You asked. Everything together, it says things. Like when you watch a friend do the same things they’ve always done, and you just know whats going to happen.”


“Hm. There’s only one thing to do then.”
“Drink until I legitimately black out?”
“Maybe later.”
“Unhealthy amounts of coffee?”
“Bingo.”

The local coffeeshop had closed a couple months earlier thanks, in no small part due to the multi-national mega-chain and its nazi-esque marketing.
“Yeah, this is much more comfortable. And the old place didn’t have white chocolate mochas.”
“The variety here is certainly more varied. And, more importantly, the cups are twice the size. I greatly approve.”
“You are, without doubt, a creature of extremes, Andrew.”
“I’ve never said otherwise.”
“So why are we here?”
“Your new, shall we call them, perceptions are difficult to define. More importantly, we’ve yet to really prove if they are the results of new understandings or if you are just delusional.”
“Look I told you all that stuff I saw on TV.”
“First, we never really checked to see if any of those shows turned out the way you ‘predicted’. And its not as if TV isn’t predictable by its very nature.”
“And the porn in the static?”
“Well, besides that being a rather beautiful turn of phrase, you could easily have caught a tiny glimpse of it before I came down. If your grip on reality were slipping enough, you might not even remember.”
“Y’know, this continuing harping on the fact that I may be twice as nuts as you isn’t appreciated.”
“You aren’t twice as nuts as I am. You just aren’t as thoroughly medicated.”
“To which I can only reply ‘goody’.”
“The insane often have an openness to information that the normal do not. You’d be surprised how many schitzophrenics can spot a lie that would make it past a seasoned detective.”
“Again with the crime drama.”
“It isn’t my fault that the concepts and themes contained in such programs find application in the real world.”
“Riddle me this. Are they finding application for situations, or are you finding situations for their application?”
“Riddle me this, do you have any idea what you just said?”
”No.”
“Then back to the situation at hand. Here, I am sure, we can find a way here to start some more convincing tests.”
We sat there for a couple minutes in silence.
“Uh, I’m not really sure how to do this.”
“I suspect you don’t have to ‘do’ anything.”
“I’m good at that.”
We continued to sit.
I just let my eyes wander and continued to consume my white chocolate espresso. And ordered another one.
There was this girl. Pretty, but not oppressively so. Something about the way she was playing with her spoon. Something about the way her pump dangled from her toes.
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“That girl.”
“Yes. She’s a girl. I would have expected that your education in pornography would have crippled your ability to recognize anything with less than a D cup as a girl. But it would seem I was mistaken.”
“Hey! Just cause I watch a little skinflick once in a while…”
“What about the girl?”
“What, the redhead with the badge?”
“No. Please focus. The girl you pointed out to me.”
“Sorry. Too much caffine. So you see that girl?”
“Yes.”
“She’s waiting for her boyfriend. She’s going to break up with him. Soon.”
“Interesting.”
There was something else. Behind me.
“And do you hear that boy behind us?”
Andrew’s eyes glazed as he focused his hearing.
“Yes.”
“He’s talking about his day at school, right?”
”Yes. Apparently he didn’t do very well on his math quiz.”
“That’s what he’s saying, but its not what he’s SAYING.”
“Something bad has been happening. I think…wait…”
We waited.
“Kid’s been playing on the school football team. His mom wouldn’t let him try out but he forged her signature on the permission slip.”
“So he’d rather be playing sports than in class. That applies to a lot of children.”
“No. That’s very general, and very true. But what I’m hearing is that he is, very specifically, playing football and forged his mom’s signature to do so.”
Andrew’s eyes glazed over for a moment.
“Then all we have to do is find out if its true and then we are one step closer to understanding whats happening to you.”
“No. We’re one step closer to you believing me.”
“Yes. But given your inability to determine the goings on in your brain, that’s a big step forward. My insight will no doubt be crucial.”
“No doubt.”
“Come. Lets go ask him.”
“Yes. Because there’s nothing a kid likes more than getting busted in a lie to his mother. Especially while she’s sitting right there. And, of course, there’s nothing a mother likes more than strange men coming up talking to her son and apparently knowing quite a bit about them. Even more so when one of them looks like he might be gay.”
“You look gay?”
“No. You do.”
“I do?”
“You dress well, are in decent shape, and speak very eloquently.”
“I was unaware that these qualities would place me in that subclass.”
“Well, now you are.”
Actually, I had no idea whether or not Andrew was gay. I honestly didn’t know if he was sexual at all.
“Then what do we do,” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Perhaps we could read his team scores from the local newspaper out loud. Then we could guage his reaction.”
“No good. He could just have some school spirit.”
“True enough.”
“We could go over and just start a conversation with the mother, mention how her son looks like and athelete and go from there.”
“I believe that puts us back in the ‘strangers with candy’ scenario.”
“Yeah.”
“If we can not approach the pair, then we must proceed discretely. Find out on our own.”
“I can’t believe you are suggesting we stalk a 12 year old.”
“Then we are at an impass.”
“This is unbelievably frustrating. I know things, but they aren’t things we can really confirm since, of course, those things are private. And if I knew the people well enough, then I might, reasonably, know those private things. And then you’d just write it off.”
“Round and round we go.”
We turned back to the girl. In the time we’d spent discussing the situation, her boyfriend had shown up.
“Watch this, Andrew.”
The two were talking, we watched the man’s smile fade. She was speaking quietly, gently and slowly. She reached to touch his hand but he pulled it away before she could. I thought he might cry. Then I thought he’d yell. But all he did was get up and walk away.
“So, I think I’ve proven my point.”
“A small step. Very small. Your ability to read body language is impressive, but explainable. I think you’d agree that something else was going on with you. Be it actual or imagined.’
“And we have no real way at the moment to prove it, do we.”
“No. Not as such.”
I sighed. While I had, at moments, doubted my sanity, doubted that what was happening, what I was seeing hearing and knowing, was real, mostly I was frustrated. And growing very tired of this. On some level, I’d stop caring whether I was mad or not. Whether I’d gained some strange ability. I really just wanted to know either way.
And I wanted a pizza.
“Let’s go home and order food.”
“That’s fine. I need a nap as it is.”
“You’ve had 4 espressos.”
“Caffeine puts me to sleep.”
“You are very odd.”
“Indeed.”
*
At home, Andrew went up to his room and I called for food.
As I paid the pizzaboy, I suggested he stop stealing from the shop.
He suggested I perform inappropriate acts with a sparrow, and left.
I suppose I’d missed an opportunity there.
An easy one.
All of this should have been easy but somehow I just wasn’t thinking of the right ways to do it. To prove what was happening. It was beginning to feel like my brain was working against me. Then again, it wouldn’t have been the first time.
I sat down, frustrated, and opened the pizza box.
Patterns.
I saw patterns.
Patterns within patterns drawn on the pizza.
A scattering of different paths in a haze and one more clearly drawn but incomplete.
I half-glowing line of where I was.
Where I’d been.
But not where I was going.
I blinked.
And I saw cheese.
“Ok, now this is just getting weird. Kindly leave my food alone. A man can take a great deal so long as he can eat.”
I blinked again.
The cheese remained cheese.
More importantly, the pepperoni remained pepperoni and didn’t turn into, for example, eyes, as they had on other, more chemically induced, occasions.
“Thank you. I appreciate it,” I said aloud to, well, whomever.
“We can return to our regularly scheduled chaos in 30 minutes.”
I ate.
I thought about my recent dreams. They’d seemed strange at the time, but given my life at the moment, they didn’t feel out of place anymore. Something was bubbling its way up. Something very very odd, or something very very odd that was going to rate me a thorazine Big Gulp on a regular basis.
I decided.
It was real.
I still didn’t know what ‘it’ was.
But I wasn’t crazy.
I made the decision to not be crazy.
The streets were crowded as I wandered through them. That was just fine by me. I didn’t feel like having to make eye-contact, didn’t really feel like looking at anyone, didn’t really feel like knowing any secrets.
Don’t get me wrong, seeing inside a person’s life through their body language, and whatever secret language I was hearing now was great. Or, at least, not boring. And I do so hate being bored. But it was starting to keep me from being able to think. All this background noise, this visual static was turning into input, into information that was coming at me faster and faster. I don’t like being bored, but theres only so much a boy’s brain can take before he needs to turn off the TV. Keeping my head down seemed to do the trick, so long as the noise level was high enough.
I did keep hearing half parts of sentences.
I was starting to notice something though.
Behind everything, behind even the new stuff I was hearing, was something else.
Something being said.
A sentence made up of every other sentence.
And it was starting to annoy me. Like someone talking about you a little too far away to hear. Half a word here, half a word there, but nothing you can really tell. Its enough to make a guy paranoid.
And it wasn’t like I wasn’t being given reason to be paranoid.
You have a couple severe blackouts in the space of a week for no apparent reason and you’ll start to get a little worried about what you’ve been doing in your ‘spare’ time and who you’ve been doing it in front of.
I wondered if I should hire someone to follow me. A private eye, or something. Andrew knew something about what was going on, but honestly, I didn’t trust him to tell me if it didn’t fit whatever idea that was going on inside his head at that particular moment. He could shift gears faster than a sports car driver doing a quarter-mile. And he had a sardonic sense of humor which, though I often appreciated, wasn’t really appropriate for this situation.
“Megan!” I said out loud.
She had that tech guy. He must have something as simple as a camera that could keep eyes on me.
I called her on my cell.
“Megan, its Martin. Got a sec?”
“Sure. I’m not doing anything much except walking around in my bare feet. At, I’d like to mention, 50 bucks an hour. That doubles the moment I can pick up a piece of paper with my toes. You don’t even want to know what happens if I learn to write with a pen like that.”
“Is there really any reason for us not to focus our business on your escapades alone?”
“Not one that anybody has mentioned to me. Mostly, though, I think you both are afraid of the sheer power my few pounds of luscious flesh command.”
“I think its mostly that I’ll never be able to impress you if you are my primary source of income.”
“One, you haven’t impressed me yet. Two, check the books. I may very well be your primary source of income.”
“Number two isn’t real reliable. You keep the books.”
“Yes. Yes I do. You can see them when you are ready.”
“Ready?”
“To crawl and kiss my toes and worship me like the Queen I am.”
“We’ve been having fun, haven’t we?”
“Oh, most certainly. I made sure a few of the audience members caught the last few bits of our conversation. One of them may have just had a seizure. Luckily, I have the credit cards.”
“You are truly a strange, powermad bitch. Thank goodness for that.”
“Anyhow, we’re muted now.”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“You’re repeating yourself, you know.”
“Sorry. Its been a strange week.”
“So I’ve been lead to believe. Hearing any voices but my own right now?”
“Yes. But it’s OK. They aren’t telling me to kill anyone or anything.”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“Now stop it. And you really shouldn’t even consider getting back together with that guy. He’d go apoplectic if he saw your website.”
“He’s seen it, and that’s why he called, drooling.”
“For now.”
“And just how did you know about him?”
“Oh, just voices in my head. You need something done to him, you let me know. I’ve got a great alibi.”
“No, thanks, that’s OK. You’d only hurt yourself.”
“Ouch. Anyhow, that geek you’ve got doing work for you, I need to talk with him.”
“Oh,, he’d love to set up a site for you. He’s very cute and very single. You’re just his type.”
“Glee. No, really, I need him to help me keep track of myself.”
“Try Buddhism.”
“No, not spiritually. Physically.”
“Huh. OK. I’ll let him know. But I’m sure he’d be happy to keep track of you himself.”
“Exactly when will this sophomoric line of humor end?”
“If you are lucky, when you hang up.”
“Well, then…”
“Yes. I have to go paint my toes now, anyways. Girl has to make a living.”
“Thanks.”

Megan had a point though. I wonder if Dennis and I were, in fact, threatened by her success. It had been our idea, but mostly as a joke. Now it was just running wild. If it was making the money she claimed it was, then maybe we did have to shift our focus. I’d need to review those numbers first. But I wasn’t ready to crawl for them. Yet.

She called back 15 minutes later.
“OK, Scott thinks he can help you. You should meet him around 2:00 at his office.”
“Great. Thanks, Meg.”
“Sorry, no time for banter. I have to fold my laundry.”
“Ok, just…wait…no, I don’t want to know.”
She gave me the address which left me with a couple hours to kill.
Which, to me, says its time to start drinking.
I thought about that for a moment.
No. I was blacking out enough without alcohol.
I decided that food was a better idea instead.
Alternately, I could go find a cybercafe and watch Megan.


“So, I take it you didn’t go watch Megan.”
“No, Andrew, I didn’t go watch Megan.”
“Why not?”
“Well, reason one: I didn’t feel comfortable watching porn at a cybercafe, no matter how suggestive it actually is instead. Assuming the place would even let me connect to such a site.”
“Ah. Yes. And reason two?”
“Why must there be a second reason?”
“There doesn’t HAVE to be a second reason, except you noted that the previous reason was ‘reason one’. Of course, this implies, at the very least, a reason two.”
“I can hardly argue with that. Reason two is that it borders on sexual harassment.”
“The fact that you didn’t argue with me on topic is a promising sign given that you’ve been arguing with me near constantly. That said, it seems improbable that watching your employee do her work could be construed as harassment.”
“While I can’t help but agree with you, I also can’t help but realize that I’d be the target of the lawsuit if we were wrong. And when I say ‘we’, I mean me, the target, and you, the guy who wouldn’t be involved at all. So I’ll stick with the end that goes safe with me.”
“Excellent. We are back to you being testy. I’m no good at these quick shifting of gears.”
“Look, if you had, I don’t know, whatever it is I have, you’d be testy too.”
“Make believe I don’t have no understanding of what you are talking about.”
“That’s either surprisingly modest or less-surprisingly condescending.”
“Does it matter either way?”
“No, probably not. Look, whether you believe that whats happening to me is objective or subjective, it feels like there’s more and more noise all around me. Visual, and auditory.”
“And, now that I think about it, that particular aspect of the situation falls outside the objective/subjective issue.”
“Thank you, I think. Anyhow, the relevant issue is that its starting to get louder and more crowded.”
“More crowded?”
“That’s the only way I can describe it.”
“So you are feeling more than a little overwhelmed.”
“Yes. I am.”
“And what, exactly, would you have me do?”
“Show some sympathy?”
”No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh, c’mon. Just a little?”
“Why bother? It won’t rectify the situation.”
“No, I suppose it won’t.”
“Unless you actually are crazy, and my sympathy would be so comforting that it made the bad voices go away. I could do that, if you think it would help.”
“And if I think it would help then I’m basically admitting I’m crazy.”
“More or less.”
“I am unthrilled with my options.”
“There you have my sympathies.”
“Well, that’s something. I guess I’ll take what I can get.”
“Make no mistake, I do feel sympathy with your sanity dilemma. I have been there more than a few times myself. However, I don’t know how to help with your expanding of perceptions or your perception of your expanding perceptions. It seems that the best idea is to, well, make the best of it.”
“Which means?”
“As we have noted, you are experiencing something new, be it real or imaginary. I would suggest that temporary relief might be found in going out and taking advantage of these new senses.”
“Really?”
“Really. Either it takes your mind off of things, or brings you a certain amount of personal gain.”
“Go on.”
“Poker and women.”
“Ah. Yes.”