"Alice is a grown woman Soft. She and I haven't been together for months. I can't tell her not to bleed. She's free to bleed if she wants. And I never made any specifically blood-related commitment to you, that I can recall. Anyway, you're a.s.suming that it is Alice's blood, or blood or some simulation of blood that Alice for some reason distributed. We can't make that a.s.sumption."

"I'm not making any a.s.sumptions," said Soft defensively. "I'm making an observation. It looks like somebody committed a murder down there."

"Murders produce pints and pints of blood. The floor would be slippery with the blood of a whole person. When the police come upon the scene of a murder the rookies vomit, involuntarily. Did you involuntarily vomit? If not, I find it hard to believe that it resembled the scene of a murder, or at least the murder of a full-sized person."

"I didn't vomit," Soft confessed, looking bedazzled. He squinted into the sun, thinking. "It does look like somebody had a pretty serious accident down there, Philip. I don't mean to worry you."

"Oh, I'm not worried. Alice is her own woman. If I'm concerned at all it's in a friendly, interfaculty sort of way. I mean, she and I shared some good times. But there's no special worry."

"I didn't realize."

"What say you get back down there and wait around and make sure n.o.body, Alice or anyone else, gets back into the chamber? That might be important. I'll take a look around and see if I can scare up Alice, and when I do I'll give you a call. I'm sure it's just some little thing. We'll all have a good laugh over it at the party."

"What?" Soft looked punctured.

"The Christmas party. You're going, aren't you?" I chucked him on the shoulder. "Go back to the lab. I'll give you a call."

He nodded, his shoulders round with the weight of his confusion, and turned back toward the physics facility. I watched him go, my heart pounding. Disaster footage played on my mind's screen. As soon as he was out of sight I ran back to the apartment.

Alice's car was sitting in the driveway, idling, empty. The pa.s.senger seat was loaded with her clothes. There was a spot of blood on the carpet by the accelerator. Her keys dangled from the ignition, vibrating with the engine. I left the car running and went inside.

Alice was at the sink, splas.h.i.+ng in the flow from the tap. A b.l.o.o.d.y heap of paper towels lay on the counter. She was hastily rewrapping a blood-soaked bandage around the base of her left thumb. I counted her fingers-they were all there.

She looked up at me, stricken, then grabbed the loose end of her bandage and furiously taped it down. She didn't want me to see her helpless. She'd obviously meant to get out before I found her.

"Alice," I said.

She looked at me like I was an entire roadblock of police. I tried to stay calm myself, to ignore the ring of crimson in the sink.

"Soft is worried," I said. "Apparently you left some kind of mess in the chamber."

"I cut myself."

She swirled water in the sink, rinsing away most of the blood. I stood and watched. She balled up the paper towels, clumsily, with her one good hand, and stuffed them into the garbage pail.

She met my eye, and I saw a hint of regret, as if the absurdity and pain of her situation, of our situation, had all of a sudden become plain to her. Then her gaze fell. She tugged at her bandage once to make sure it was secure, and went to the door.

"You're leaving," I said.

She nodded.

"Let me walk you to the car."

She climbed gingerly into the front seat, and tested her bandaged hand against the steering wheel. The wound was to the meat of her thumb. A bad injury for a driver. She tried to hide it from me, but I saw her wince.

I leaned in to her window. "You look terrible," I said.

Alice nodded. She pulled her lips together, fighting tears.

"You must be worried about Evan and Garth," I said.

She let her hands come away from the wheel, and crossed them in her lap, the wounded one resting on top.

"You're going to your parents' place?"

"I think so," she said. "I have to get farther away."

"From Lack, you mean."

"And you."

I was surprised. Alice blinked up at me, weakly defiant.

"You cut yourself," I said. When we spoke it was still in a lover's clipped code, tips standing in for icebergs.

"I made a mistake," she said.

"You gave part of yourself to Lack." It came out practically a whisper.

"A small part. I tried."

"He didn't take it, you mean."

She nodded.

I squinted up at the winter sky. It was a beautiful day. I felt dirty, unshaven, and hopeless.

Suddenly, idiotically, I realized I'd been counting on spending Christmas with Alice. A c.h.i.n.k in my heart's pill-bug armor. I'd be hurt by her going away.

"You don't have to go," I said.

"I do."

"I understand," I said. "You feel bad about Evan and Garth. And everything that happened, your hand, me. But it doesn't mean you have to run away."

"For a while, Philip. I'm sorry."

I struggled for words. "You still love Lack, I guess."

She nodded.

A cold wind swept over the roof of the car, into my face. I coughed into my fist, and felt my stubbly chin and chapped lips against my hand.

"What you did down there is crazy, you know."

She nodded again, and ran her good right hand through her short hair, front to back. She had new mannerisms to go with her short hair.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"It bleeds a lot," she said.

"Did you disinfect it?"

"Yes."

We fell silent. I wanted her bandage to come undone, her wound to bleed, so that she would need my help. I could carry her from the car, then come back, turn her key back out of the ignition, and pocket it.

"What should I tell Soft?" I said. I was stalling.

"About what?"

"I can't keep covering for you. It's too much. Questions are being asked. Soft said it looked like a murder. That's just one example. There's also Evan and Garth. You're dropping everything in my lap."

Alice looked at me sharply. "There is no more Evan and Garth," she said. "Nothing in your lap."

"Listen to you, you're jealous. Lack took someone else. That's what's behind these suicidal gestures, these elegiac departures. Jealousy."

"Don't, Philip."

"I just don't understand-"

How you can leave me, I almost finished. But I caught myself. Her car was running, and the chances were that in a minute or two I'd have to face myself, alone. So I put together another end for my sentence, one safely shallow and bitter.

"I don't understand why I go on making this so easy for you. Why I'm such a-what's it called? A doormat, that's it. Or doorman. Good morning, Ms. Coombs, watch your step, here's the void. When one word from me and the jig, as they say, is up. No more Alice and Lack."

That did it. Alice gripped the steering wheel, obviously fighting pain, and s.h.i.+fted the car into reverse. She pulsed her foot on the brake so the car rolled an inch away, as warning, then looked up at me one last time.

"Do what you have to do," she said.

She accelerated backward in a lurch out of the driveway, then s.h.i.+fted and sped away, leaving me standing there, less doormat or doorman than door, slammed.

I went inside and called Soft. I told him that I'd found Alice, that she was fine, and that she'd only accidentally cut herself in the chamber. I spread apologies like margarine. Soft seemed mollified. I hung up and went into the bathroom to shower and shave, to reorganize a presentable, inhabitable self. By the time I was done it was five-thirty. The day had leaked away. I heated a can of bean-and-bacon soup on the stove and ate it in silence, my mind vacant like a chewing cow's.

Then I found a dusty bottle of scotch, and poured myself a gla.s.s.

Two hours later I knocked on the door of the Melinda Fenderman Memorial Guest Apartment, where Braxia was staying. Students were partying in anarchic cl.u.s.ters, and the campus was like a darkened landscape lit by tribal bonfires.

Braxia opened the door.

"May I come in?" I said.

"Of course," said Braxia.

The Apartment was clean. The walls were all oak paneling, with a row of plaques noting the previous occupants. Braxia's was surely in preparation. His baggage was heaped in the foyer. I smelled bleach. The Italian physicist must have been scrubbing the fixtures when I knocked.

"I was just walking, and I saw the light on," I said.

"Welcome," he said.

Braxia was dressed in a white s.h.i.+rt, and black suit pants. The jacket was draped over the back of a chair in the living room. Every light in the apartment was on. Suddenly he looked like Manhattan Project newsreel footage. I saw him in black and white.

"You're packed," I said stupidly.

"My plane is tonight."

"What? You're missing the Christmas party?"

"I suppose. You? Or have you been there already?"

Did my breath stink of the scotch I'd been drinking? "I don't know if I'll go, actually. I was just out walking. The last night, you know. I like to feel it. Soak it up. And I wanted to talk to you."

Braxia smiled to himself, and led me into the middle of the tiny apartment. He sat on the couch and crossed his legs. I stood leaning against the back of an easy chair. The room was so bare I wondered if Braxia had packed up a few of the furnis.h.i.+ngs.

"Talk," said Braxia.

"You can't just go, like this," I said, surprising myself. "Soft isn't man enough to call you on it, but I am. What did you learn? Why are you leaving early? I'll pay your cab to wait while you talk to me. But I'm not leaving without some answers."

"About Lack. You think I have some answers for you."

"Yes."

He smiled again, demurely. "Okay, Mr. Engstrand. We will talk about Lack. What do you want to know?"

"How. Why. You said you'd solve it. You said you'd give me Alice back."

"Sit down, my dear fellow. You are making me nervous. I found out what I could from Lack. Lack is nothing. I am working on a larger problem now. I am sorry if I was no help with your Professor Alice. I forgot."

"That's your big theory? 'Lack is nothing'?"

He looked at me warily. "Okay, Mr. Engstrand. Sit down. You have an advantage over me: You have had a drink, and I have not. Now I will have a drink too. You want a drink? Have a drink with me, Mr. Engstrand."

I sat on the chair. Braxia went into the kitchen. I heard him easing ice cubes out of a tray. A minute later he reappeared with a pair of tall gla.s.ses, filled with orange juice.

"Vodka, you know, has the fewest impurities," he said. "And some vitamin C. Good for you."

I took a gla.s.s. He guzzled, I sipped.

"Okay," he said, smacking his lips. "A drink is good, for big talking. To talk to you about Lack I first have to talk to you about observer-triggered reality. Okay?"

I nodded.

"This is my life's work, Mr. Engstrand. Ah, I wish you spoke Italian. It's like this. Consciousness creates reality. Only when there is a mind to consider the world is there a world. Nothing before, except potential. Potential this, potential that. The creation event, the big bang-it was the creation of enormous potential, nothing more."

I was already lost. "You're saying there's no world where there isn't a mentality to consider a world."