I went inside. The house was quiet, the blind men asleep. I crept in to look at Alice, in our old bed, where she was sleeping. She looked very peaceful. I got under the covers beside her, fully dressed. She stirred, but didn't wake. I curled around her and quickly fell asleep. When I awoke the next morning she was gone.

It was a week until Christmas. Two days until the end of the term. National Entropy Awareness Week, according to the papers. A cloud of stress hung over the campus. Students appeared in my office ranting or shaking like heretics. Tempera Santas appeared on store windows, and immediately began flaking into colorful drifts in the window displays underneath. Braxia announced that the Italian team would fly back to Pisa at the end of the term. They were abandoning Lack. My sports-injury student called me, badly shaken. His results had been published in an in-house journal of the Navy Seals, been taken as relevant to combat situations. On Tuesday hail fell, lodging in the shrubbery like crystals of salt in broccoli.

As for Alice, after our night together she crept back to the margins, the zone of silence. Sometimes it seemed to me that Lack had, after all, accepted her offer, and Alice had pa.s.sed through to the other side. The part of her that mattered, anyway.

When I came home Thursday she spoke again, but this time my hopes didn't rise. The trail to my heart was growing cold.

"Something might have happened," she said.

"Probably something did," I said. I set my papers on the table.

"Something bad, I think."

"Tell me about it."

"Evan and Garth didn't come home last night."

"I noticed. Did you check with Cynthia Jalter? Or the blind school?"

"I called them both," she said.

"That's a lot of talking," I said. "Are you sure you really spoke to them? Or did you just dial and breathe heavily?"

"I asked," she said, ignoring me. "n.o.body's seen them."

"They're capricious," I said. "They'll come wandering back any minute now, humming the latest pop tunes. They probably went out and got girlfriends and jobs."

Alice shook her head. "I can't find my key."

"What key?"

"The key to Lack's chamber." She stared at me, her eyes welling, her chin warping.

"What are you saying?"

"I don't know," she said, beginning to sob.

"Well, that's ridiculous. Braxia explained it to me. Lack won't take people."

Alice's tears stopped abruptly. "Braxia said that?"

"Yes." Actually, I wasn't sure he'd said that. But I let it stand.

"How does he know?"

"He knows. He's a physicist. It's probably some simple thing, some experiment he did. You could have done it, if you'd stuck with physics." I went on b.u.t.tressing my lie. Why, I'm not sure. "So stop worrying about Evan and Garth. It's just a projection. You're obsessed with the idea that Lack would take someone else, after rejecting you."

Alice stared at me hollowly.

"I'll go find them and bring them back. You stay here."

I reb.u.t.toned my coat and went out. I drove straight to the physics facility, of course.

There were students idling in the observation room, chatting about Lack, batting out theories. The Lack crowd, the groupies, making the scene. I hated them. I went to the door of the chamber.

"You can't go in there," said one of the students.

"Believe me, we've tried," said another.

"He'll eat you alive," said a third.

"Who?" I said.

"Professor De Tooth."

So De Tooth was still at it. My windup toy had turned out to be a perpetual-motion device. "I work with De Tooth," I said. "I put him onto Lack in the first place. These are my hours he's working with."

The first student shrugged. "Don't say we didn't warn you."

I turned the handle, went through the clean room, and into Lack's inner sanctum.

De Tooth was on the table, his stubby arms outstretched, the worn soles of his black shoes in the air, swimming his way toward Lack. His blond wig sat beside his open briefcase on a chair in the corner. When I entered the chamber he pushed himself backward off the table and onto his feet. I closed the door behind me. De Tooth twisted his disheveled suit back into place, smoothed down his tie, ran a pincer-like hand through his thin, gray hair, then scurried to retrieve his wig. Only after it was screwed back into place did he turn and face me "You too?" I said.

The small man turned bright red, fastened his lips together, and said nothing.

"Do what you like," I said. "I just need a few minutes alone with Lack. Then he's all yours. Or vice versa."

De Tooth picked up his briefcase and executed a militarily crisp pivot on the ball of one foot, to march past me to the door.

"And give me a sheet of paper and a pen while you're at it."

He escalated his eyebrows into his wig, fished in his briefcase for the paper and pen, then turned his back to me and disappeared.

I was alone with Lack.

I took De Tooth's paper and pen and pulled a chair up to Lack's table. The steel was still warm from the deconstructionist's body. I folded the paper into a series of lengths, creasing it between my fingernail and the hard surface of the table, then carefully tore it apart along the creases. I piled the strips into a bundle and ripped it in half to create a supply of cookie-fortune-sized slips. On the first slip I wrote: DID YOU TAKE EVAN AND GARTH?.

I slid it across the table, past Lack's lip. It rose on a cus.h.i.+on of air as I released it, then, fluttering down into Lack, vanished. I stood up and peered around the edges of the table. It was gone. Lack had taken the slip of paper. He'd found the question palatable. But what did it mean? I pulled another slip and wrote: IF YOU TAKE THE SLIP DOES THAT MEAN YES?.

I slid it across, into the gulf. The gulp. Crossing the line, it was snuffed out of existence. I still didn't know what it meant. Lack might like the paper, the ink, my handwriting. But it was possible we'd established a link, a common language. I was impatient for more answers, too impatient to quibble. I wrote: ARE THEY STILL ALIVE?.

I handed it across the line, where it was extinguished. Three in a row. We were talking. Lack had taken the blind men. He'd swallowed them up. And now he was confessing it to me. But they were still alive, wherever they were. Wherever it was that Lack led. Alive as Lack defined it, anyway. In a spell, I wrote: WILL YOU EVER TAKE ALICE?.

Fingers trembling, I pushed it across. It disappeared. This time I wanted to check again. I got out of my seat and went around the table. A part of me insisted that the slip-all four of the slips-should actually have swirled to the floor like maple-seed pods. But no. Nothing. I got down on my hands and knees, under the table. All I found was a single long strand of Alice's hair, left over from her self-scalping.

I went back to my seat, heart pounding. Lack would take Alice, he said. The worst possible news. At the same time, I was flattered by Lack's cooperation. I had a scoop. Lack was a Ouija board, and I was the medium. I felt possessive. This was the first time Lack had aimed his seductiveness at me directly. I understood Soft, and Braxia, and De Tooth, and even Alice, a little better.

I couldn't underestimate this enemy. The temptation I felt was proof of his power. I looked at the blond thread of hair in my hand. He'd already removed Alice from me, I reminded myself. And now he's promising to finish the job, to remove her from the world as well. I laid the hair aside, picked up the pen, and wrote: DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT SHE LOVES YOU?.

I offered Lack the slip, and he took it. This time I didn't bother looking behind the table for something that wasn't there. The question was meaningful to him, and the answer was yes. He knew. Alice had managed to make her feelings known. I shuddered. I took another slip, and wrote: ARE YOU WAITING FOR HER TO CHANGE?.

Lack took that one, too. My worst fears confirmed. Lack was aware of her attempts to change herself for him, and he was judging her. So Braxia was wrong; Alice would be Lack's first reversal of policy, his first acceptance after refusal, after revision. Because she tried so hard. He was charmed, like a heartless mythological G.o.d with a mortal admirer. Imaginary b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I hated him. I jotted out: DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I LOVE HER?.

I pushed it across. In it went, engulfed, devoured. It was like he wanted to eat my love itself. Each answer was more cruel than the last. Holding my breath, I wrote: IF YOU TAKE HER, WILL SHE BE HAPPY?.

Lack sucked it away. I sat blinking, stymied. Was that better, or worse? Which answer was I looking for? Should I act selflessly now, urge her back up on the table? No. I'd guard that information jealously. Why had I been so stupid as to ask?

I picked up another slip. I had a thousand urgent questions. Then a vague suspicion crept over me. My pile of slips was half gone, and I still hadn't received a single no. Was I leading the witness?

I had to test him. I wrote: WOULD YOU LIKE A LITTLE RED PARTY HAT?.

The idiotic question was taken. Engulped. I picked up the blank slips that remained and hurled them toward Lack. As they fluttered chaotically across the line they each, in turn, were spirited silently away. Extinguished. Only one fell to the side, just missing the entrance. The rest were welcomed as gladly as my careful questions.

Lack was just a girl who can't say no. He liked freshly torn paper, or irregular rectangles. He liked f.u.c.king with my head. I picked up the slip that escaped, and wrote: DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I HATE YOU?.

I tossed it into Lack's maw as I got out of my seat. Bull's-eye, a perfect strike. I was nearly to the door before it fluttered past the end of the table and landed, with the lightest possible sound, on the floor.

I felt responsible for the blind men. It couldn't be Alice, not in her state. And Cynthia Jalter didn't live with them. They'd given me warning, too. I'd heard them yearn for a divorce from a reality that, despite their tabulations, always slipped through their grasping fingers.

I got back in my car and searched for them, pretending I didn't believe Lack. I followed the route of their walks across campus, and into town. I felt sure I'd turn a corner and see them, in their twin black suits, c.o.c.king their heads at a sound, or arguing the location of some phone booth or bus stop. But I didn't. The darker it got, the more possible it seemed that Lack was telling the truth. That he'd gobbled the blind men.

I exhausted the routes, but I kept on driving, repeating my path. I was mapping. It was like an incantation to bring them back.

Finally I drove back to the apartment. Alice was gone. I didn't care. I went in and turned on all the lights, trying to chase out the silence with light. I switched on the television and sat on the couch. No one came home. No moths were drawn to my little flame. The refrigerator hummed into activity, a life-support system for mildewed cottage cheese, stale m.u.f.fins, encrusted, forgotten spreads. Outside, students walked the pathways, shattered by their attempts at last-minute term papers, pacing off the effects of powdery drugs consumed in the cause. I curled up on the couch and slept.

The apartment spilled over with sunlight. I was still alone, still on the couch. I looked at the clock. I'd slept all night and morning, through most of the last meeting of my freshman cla.s.s.

I struggled back into my preworn clothing, my pretied shoes, ran to the anthropology building, and rushed upstairs to the airless cla.s.sroom. Only one of my sixteen students remained. He sat alone at his desk, writing in his notebook with a ballpoint pen. He looked up, astonished at my arrival.

"Professor Engstrand."

"Angus."

"I'm almost done."

"Done with what? Where did they all go?"

He blinked twice. He looked frightened.

"Tell me what happened, Angus."

"We met and waited for you, sir. Sat in our places. But you didn't come. No one said anything. Half an hour pa.s.sed. Then someone suggested that your absence might represent some new form of final exam. Some arcane and menacing form, I believe those were the exact words. We laughed nervously at first. But one by one we opened our notebooks. Began attempting to answer the question you were posing. That's why it's a little unsettling to see you here, sir. I was almost finished. The others handed in their papers to the department secretary. May I ask you a question, sir?"

"Yes, Angus."

"Does this mean I failed?"

"No, Angus. There's no time limit. Hand it in when you're done."

"Thank you, sir. Also Professor Soft was here looking for you a little while ago."

"Thank you, Angus."

I went downstairs to the faculty lounge, looking for coffee and a pastry. The place was empty, designer aluminum chairs stacked in an awkward, helix-shaped tower. The professors were all out drinking quietly in off-campus bars, unable to wait for the end-term Christmas party. I went to the snack tray and fed on crumb cake and hot black coffee.

Soft hurried in, looking pinched. He saw me and exhaled through his nostrils.

"What's the matter?" I said.

He sighed. "Let's talk outside."

"I missed my cla.s.s," I said, crumb cake clinging to my lip. "I need breakfast and a shower. I didn't sleep well."

"Let's talk outside."

I followed him out of the building, onto the lawn. The day was bright, the winter rinsed out of the air by the insistent sunlight. Students were back out on the gra.s.s, lolling, as if after s.e.x, their work finished or abandoned. Walking with Soft among them reminded me of our earlier talk, the day of our haircuts, the day Lack was named. We both needed haircuts again. It was only one of the many differences between that innocent, orderly time and now.

"What's the matter?"

"There's blood in the chamber."

I looked at Soft, hoping to see the signs that accompany cruel humor. Dancing eyes, et cetera. I didn't find any. His brow was knit.

"De Tooth," I suggested meekly.

"I've already located De Tooth." Soft's voice was reproving. "He's fine. It isn't his blood."

"But it's his s.h.i.+ft. He's supposed to be down there. He's in charge."

"No it isn't. You haven't looked at your schedule." Soft pulled out his from his pocket, held it too close to my face. "It's Alice's s.h.i.+ft as of midnight last night. De Tooth flies back to Belgium after tomorrow, for Christmas. We gave the winter break to Alice."

I started to panic, but I didn't let it show.

"And now there's blood in the chamber," he went on. "Lots of it, all over the table and the floor. Drips in the hallway. You were supposed to take care of this kind of thing, Philip. You were supposed to keep track of her s.h.i.+fts. I was counting on you."

Adrenalin sped through my tollgates without paying. When I spoke it came in a flood.