Braxia's eyes bugged with excitement, as if he might inflate and float to the ceiling. Instead he seized up the final corner of his sandwich and pushed it into his mouth.

"Okay," he said. "Very good again. I like talking with you. Yes, Lack is interested in the idea, but not metaphysical. There is nothing metaphysical. We only have to uncover the underlying physics behind it. Soft created an experiment, remember? He wanted to do some fancy physics, bring something new into the world. And he succeeded. Hah! So now we take a good look at this thing. Texts, yes. That's a good word, texts. Soft has written a new text. But it is a physics text. From physics comes physics. I will prove it to you personally."

"I look forward to it."

"Oh, but don't stop your own work. I won't hear of it. Please, come and decode the text in your own way. I will follow your work eagerly. And while you read the book, I will tell you how and why there is a book, and more. I will tell you how there is a shelf for the book, and a house for the shelf, and so on."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't quite follow you."

"Listen, my dear fellow. I'm studying the universe. Lack is just a part, a clue. I'll explain Lack, and then I'll explain the rest to you, too. The whole thing. That's my job."

"So you're getting somewhere. You're learning something about Lack."

He screwed up his forehead. "I'll tell you something, Mr. Engstrand. I have twelve men here, young, headstrong ones, who can think of nothing but physics. Like Soft, or me, ten years ago. They do what I tell them, they work around the clock for me. We will shoot the Lack with sonar, radioactivity, demagnetized particles, tachyons, whatever I can cook up. I am very patient, Mr. Engstrand. I am going to find the signal that can bounce back out, and then I am going to describe the world to which the Lack is a door. Trust me, my dear fellow."

"But there's nothing yet."

"Just strawberries."

"And in the meantime you'll tolerate Alice, you'll tolerate me if I try, you'll tolerate doddering old Soft."

Braxia seemed entertained. "Yes," he said. "Certainly. I am fond of you already. Take your hours. I welcome you. You think I want to be here all day and all night? No! This weekend I am going to Sonoma."

"It's lovely."

"Yes. Besides, I will want you around to see when I have my breakthrough. You can doc.u.ment my discovery."

"Okay," I said. "You make a discovery. I'll doc.u.ment." I'd had enough of his bombast now. I turned to leave. Let Braxia and Lack enjoy their strawberries. Somewhere outside the sun was s.h.i.+ning, somewhere skies were clear.

Before I got to the door of the chamber, though, he called to me.

"I forgot to tell you," he said. "When she came out of the chamber, she had her s.h.i.+rt on, what is the word? Inside out Inside out." His eyes bored into mine, looking for reaction.

I refused to show one.

"Alice is your lady, eh?"

"Yes, Braxia. Alice is my lady. Or was."

"You know what? By solving Lack I will cure your Alice for you, give you her back."

"I hope so," I said honestly.

After her second refusal by Lack, Alice fled to her parents, an hour north, for Thanksgiving. From the horn of emptiness to the horn of plenty. I came home to find her stuffing underwear into a weekend suitcase, Evan and Garth standing stiffly to one side, canes lifted. She left without once meeting my eye. The blind men and I stood listening as her car, improperly warmed up, roared out of the driveway.

"Huh," said Garth, with deep sourness.

It rained that weekend. Evan and Garth and I went for walks in the mist. Weather seemed to lull the blind men to silence. It provided proof of an environment, so they no longer had to conjure one up by inventory. Turning their wet faces upward, losing shoes in the sucking mud of campus paths, they were finally convinced that their verbal weather was redundant, that a world loomed out around them.

I was thinking of Braxia's a.s.surances. If it was true that Lack would never take Alice, then my struggle with Lack wasn't for her body, but for her mind, her soul. It was a struggle I felt I had a chance of winning. I sorted through long arguments in favor of myself, and against Lack. I measured my love for Alice against hers for Lack-which was craftier, which more tenacious? I was sure I knew the answer.

I'd woo her back.

On Thanksgiving I drove Evan and Garth to a dinner at the blind school, a large flat factory-like building in the middle of a gra.s.sy compound, surrounded by a baseball diamond, a parking lot, and a shallow blue swimming pool, drained for the winter and filling with dry leaves and the husks of summer insects. They invited me in, but I refused. I spent the afternoon driving in the hills above the city, nearly the only car, my radio tuned to live coverage of a far-off parade, athletes and politicians greeting crowds from garish floats. When it got dark I drove to my favorite diner, the Silver Lining, but the doors were closed. I peered in through the window. The vast, incomprehensible Greek family that ran the place was just sitting down to a pilgrim feast at the largest booth. The turkey was huge, golden, cla.s.sic, and the side dishes were endless.

When I got back to the apartment I found-surprise!-Alice clearing out the bedroom to create a painting studio.

Alice was a terrible amateur painter. Or had been. At the start of our relations.h.i.+p she'd given it up. But now her dusty equipment was resurrected from the tomb of her parents' garage. Paint-splattered easel, drop cloths, and containers of gesso and rabbit-skin glue. A thick, square mirror, edges taped. The bookshelves had been moved into the living room, to expose the north wall. A roll of fresh white duck was leaning up against the door frame, blocking the entrance. Alice was in the kitchen, rinsing old brushes at the tap.

"Alice. You're back."

Silence.

"You missed the rest of your s.h.i.+ft. Soft took over. I guess you'll have to wait until next week."

Silence. Water running in the sink.

I took a deep breath, trying to relocate my newfound, rain-washed strength.

"Possibly there's been a change," I suggested. "You're not so sure about this thing after all. You might be in over your head. Maybe you want to take a step back, get some perspective on this Lack thing."

Stony silence.

"Alice?" I moved up closer behind her. She went on gently kneading the encrusted bristles back to life.

"Maybe you're still in love with Lack," I said. "But feeling like you came on too strong. You're giving him some s.p.a.ce, so he can mull it over."

Silence. I felt my schemes evaporating in it.

"Probably you're still in love with Lack," I said. "You're determined, nothing's going to stop you. You're going to try to change yourself for him. That's why you're painting again all of a sudden."

She shook a handful of brushes dry, and gathered them in a coffee can.

"Listen," I said. "I'm going to change my approach. I'm going to be lighthearted from here on in. We'll develop a lighthearted, bantering dialogue. Like an old movie. Like in His Girl Friday His Girl Friday, when Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are old flames, but she's going to marry somebody else. He stays lighthearted. They banter. But at the same time, he's making a very sly, very persuasive pitch for himself."

Silence.

"Or if you don't want to banter you could be like James Stewart in Vertigo Vertigo, after he loses Kim Novak, the first time, and goes into a catatonic depression, and Barbara Bel Geddes has to try to jolly him out of it. With lighthearted banter. Because sometimes it's just one person carrying on the lighthearted banter and the other person listening. That's okay too."

I followed her into the bedroom, both of us ducking under the roll of canvas.

"I get it. You're not saying anything. Not a word. Why, I'll bet you haven't said a word since I came in here."

She began unrolling the canvas.

"I notice the mirror," I said. "I think I understand, I think I get it. You're going to paint self-portraits again. And offer them to Lack. Get him used to you, in stages. Is that the idea? It's very clever. If you hadn't thought of it before now you can give me the credit."

Silence.

"I get it. You're making yourself more like Lack by not talking, right?"

Silence that would seem to be confirmation.

"Okay. There's just one thing I want you to know, one thing I want to say. This is hardly lighthearted banter, I realize, but I just want to slip this in at the very start, and then I'll run with the banter from now on. I love you, Alice. It's important you hear that, it's important you know."

The silence was like a carca.s.s in the room with us. A rotting defrosted mammoth of silence. Outside I heard a car door slam, and blind footsteps tapping their way up the porch stairs. Alice began chopping at the canvas with the scissors, her face beet red.

"I'm learning to hate the sound of my own voice," I said.

"I'm here as a patient," I said. I wanted roles to be clear.

Cynthia Jalter's daytime offices were in a private medical building in a sunny, modern complex near downtown Beauchamp. She shared a receptionist, waiting area, and piped-in Muzak selections with a Dr. Gavin Flapcloth. The office was even more generic than the informal counseling area in her apartment. The curtains, lamp shades, tissues, and the color in the sky of the small landscape in oils above the desk were all the same color, a meek, inoffensive yellow. It probably bore the name buff buff or or c.o.c.kle c.o.c.kle. The office had no windows. It was like being submerged in a gla.s.s of lukewarm eggnog.

Cynthia Jalter, on the other hand, was poised and elegant. Her black hair was swept back to expose her eyebrows, which met over her nose. She was the least blond woman I had ever met.

"I couldn't possibly take you on," she said. "We have a relations.h.i.+p outside this office."

"I'll relinquish that," I said. "I want you to dissect me. Understand my life."

She smiled. "We can't go backward. It doesn't work that way."

"My problems are couple related," I said. "I'm asking the advice of an expert."

"We met in a bar, you and I. You bought me a drink."

"That was fieldwork," I said. "You wanted to see me exhibit my tropism, my need to couple. Let's call it Life-Scenario Therapy."

"Two lonely people meeting in a bar."

My eyes wandered to a picture on the far wall. A faded print of a familiar painting: Brueghel's Icarus Icarus, falling into the ocean unseen.

"I need your help," I said. "Things you said have been haunting me. Delusory or subjective worlds. Dual cognitive systems. Inequal growth. Do they apply to me? I need to understand."

She sighed. "With what goal? Reentry? My understanding was that you're currently uncoupled."

"Am I? See, you've helped me already. That's exactly what I'm missing, a terminology to apply to my situation. Uncoupled. Of course. Cynthia, can't you see I'm operating at a disadvantage? Everyone around has a theory or an obsession. I'm making it up as I go along."

Cynthia Jalter lowered her head and smiled to herself. She set her clipboard on the desk and crossed her legs.

"You've got yourself mixed up with Alice's experiment," she said. "Lack's the one without any method. You're just using that as a cover."

"What are you saying?"

"You say you want my help, but I think you're kidding yourself. You want to avoid seeing the effect you're having on someone else. To avoid responsibility."

I stared blankly. The Muzak swelled.

"Do you know what I thought when you called?"

I was mute, wheels turning silently inside.

"I have to be honest with you, Philip. I'm not interested in your coming to me with problems about Alice. I don't think you have any. She's gone. What I would be interested in is seeing you exhibit your tropism."

I felt my face flush, my palms moisten. A common panic a.s.sociated with frank avowals by dauntingly attractive women.

"I don't want to be your therapist," she said. "I might like to make love to you."

She leaned back in her chair. Her cheeks were a little flushed too. I felt courted, dizzy. Was it this simple? No more Alice? Could Cynthia Jalter simply uncouple me like a jigsaw-puzzle section and move me into her frame?

When I examined myself for response, I found a void, a lack.

"Is this an abuse of therapeutic confidence?" I said, dodging. "Can I lodge a complaint? Have I got a lawsuit?"

"I haven't accepted payment or even verbally contracted to see you professionally," she said. "We're just squatters in this office right now, not therapist and patient."

"Okay. No hard feelings. I just wanted to know."

"I understand. Besides, this might all be just some advanced therapeutic format. What did you call it? Life-Scenario Therapy."

I smiled weakly, at a loss. Cynthia Jalter got out of her seat, moved around her desk and out of view, then reappeared behind my chair, her arms draped over the back, her fingertips lightly touching my shoulders.

"Relax," she said.

"I am relaxed. It's just buried under layers of incredulity and panic. But underneath those I'm very relaxed."

"Philip."

"Also I am attracted to you. But I don't know how to approach a woman whose area of expertise is what goes wrong when people overlap."

"Don't worry."

"Also your office is like the living quarters of a s.p.a.ce capsule they would use to send television talk-show hosts to other worlds."

"Should we go for a walk?"

"Yes."

She had a word with the receptionist, then we stepped outside, into the cold, sunny afternoon. She took my hand and led me around the corner, to a gra.s.sy courtyard behind the medical offices, sheltered from the street by a low brick wall. From there I could see the parking lot of the Look 'n' Like, the milling shoppers examining wreaths of pinecone and fir under a yellow tarpaulin. I looked up and caught a blurry figure moving behind the pebbled gla.s.s of the medical building windows.

I pointed. "Dr. Flapcloth?"