-Well, who's stopping you? said Billy.

-What?

-Who was that guy? asked Guy.

-Some Caltech nerd. He was explaining to me this abstruse Internet coding he's developed. Which, as you know, is the quickest way to my heart. I'm still kind of weak at the knees. Hold me.

-Internet coding? What's it do?

-It throws up all over you if you even mention those two words again.

-It. Do.

-G.o.d. You need to know when to switch off.

-Is there an after-party? Will there be drugs?

-There's always an after-party. And there's always drugs. That's how I lure you down here to look at the spermy art.

-I wish people would stop reading my mind.

-You should stop writing it down then.

-How much longer ...

-... will I put up with you? Hard to say. Why don't you go get your car and we'll talk about it on the way to the dealer's apartment.

-You're talking about the art dealer, aren't you?

-Is there any other kind? asked Violet, smiling enigmatically in a way that Guy thought was absolutely unfair.

-Do you think the Caltech nerd will be there?

-I imagine so. He owns the gallery.

-I thought you said he was a Caltech nerd.

-He is. His family's got money. He just does this to meet girls, or try to meet girls, which doesn't seem to be going well, judging from the frustration evidenced in these paintings.

-He did these?

-Well, technically, you could say his computer did them. But since he programmed the computer ... you know, conceptual art is not really my thing.

-Then why do you come?

-I enjoy watching you suffer, is one reason. And the look on Billy's face, you can't really put a price tag on that. Also, and this is really just an ancillary to the first two reasons, if I ever want a show of my own, I have to play the game.

-But you like playing the game.

Violet sighed. -Yeah. The tortured artist thing doesn't really suit me.

-Wouldn't it be cool if I wasn't such a loser and I could support you and maybe buy you a gallery of your own and you could just paint all day?

-I'd go nuts out of boredom. If you weren't such a loser I probably wouldn't even like you.

-That's the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me.

-I mean it too.

-I know.

The after-party was somewhere downtown, in an old Art Deco building that had been turned into loft s.p.a.ces in an attempt to renovate the hollow core at the heart of Los Angeles, an effort that so far was doing okay but not spectacularly well. Guy wandered aimlessly through the crowd of black-spectacled hipsters, wondering if he should get a pair of black specs, even though his vision was perfect. Maybe even better than perfect. Better at any rate than the mediocre red wine in his gla.s.s tumbler.

I don't understand the vogue for alternative wine gla.s.ses, thought Guy. Is there a reason for it or is it just a statement of "We are not grown up, we're only playing"? And how does that statement work, exactly? There are people here in their fifties making the same statement. At some point the thing you're pretending to be becomes the thing you are, otherwise you look ridiculous. Or you look ridiculous anyway but you don't care, or you look ridiculous but you don't know you look ridiculous. That might be where I fit. Wish I knew how exactly to look at myself through other people's eyes.

-Some people shouldn't be allowed to breed, said a voice beside Guy, which turned out to belong to the Caltech nerd slash gallery owner.

-Did you say breed or breathe? asked Guy.

-I ...

-It doesn't matter. I agree with both statements. But only if I get to choose. I hear you've developed some new kind of Internet coding?

-You heard that?

-I have lousy hearing. But my eyesight is very good.

-It's true. I don't think it has any practical application, but it's kind of fun.

-Did someone say something about fun? asked Billy, sidling up to Guy and the Caltech nerd.

-A different kind of fun, said Guy. He turned back to the Caltech nerd. -So what is it exactly?

-Well, in essence, I've developed a way using 4D quaternion Julia set fractals ...

-Julia Fractals! exclaimed Billy. -That would be a cool name for a punk rock singer. I mean, you know, a girl.

-Ignore my friend, said Guy. -He's out of his depth talking about anything except nineteenth-century Eastern European literature.

-Maybe it's not that interesting, demurred the nerd.

-No, don't say that, I won't hear it, it absolutely is interesting, said Guy.

-It's nothing much. It's a way to untraceably interfere with websites by planting subsensory messages that would be unknowingly viewed by anyone who visits. For instance, if you hated Republicans, you could go to a Republican site and plant a message that says, Vote Democrat.

-And that would work?

-It depends how often he or she visits the site, the refresh rate of his or her browser, individual flexibility with regard to core principles, and so on. But over time, yes, I think it would have some kind of effect. Not in a drastic way-I don't think you could change someone's political outlook merely by suggestion, but you could probably affect his or her self-esteem if you wanted.

-And they would have no idea.

-None whatsoever.

-I see what you're saying. There really isn't any kind of real world implementation I can imagine, but it sounds like really good fun. I don't suppose you'd have any interest ... No, that would be imposing.

Billy walked away with a look of profound blankness on his face. Guy and the Caltech nerd watched him go with disinterest.

-What would be imposing?

-I'd really love to see how this thing works. I do some amateur dabbling in HTML myself ...

-Oh, this has nothing to do with HTML. That would be far too easy to trace. This is like reverse-engineered HTML. I actually call the coding LMTH, but that's a kind of private joke. This involves ...

-Quaternion Julia set fractals. Yes, I know. Let's just for the sake of argument say that I don't have any background in programming, or physics, or ... math. Would there be a way to explain or even show someone like that how this works?

-In theory. But it takes a lot of computing power. I have to use the lab at Caltech to produce anything near satisfactory results.

-Wow. I would so like the chance to see that.

-What, the lab?

-Yes, of course, the lab, but also just the ... process. Do you have a name for it or anything?

-No.

-Okay, well, do you have a name? Mine's Guy Forget.

-Oh. Sorry. I'm Sven. Sven Transvoort.

-That is in no way your real name.

-I was adopted.

-I don't have an excuse.

45. SIMILIA SIMILIBUS CURANTUR.

Violet sat in the permanent twilight of Guy's hospital room, unmoving, for hours. The soft hum of machinery and footsteps padding in the corridor were the only sounds, so she could hear the steady, regulated breathing of whatever was a.s.sisting Guy, keeping him alive, in the strict sense, though Violet could sense no life in her lover, no life in the room.

At length, she continued reading from the slim hardcover book balanced on an arm of the chair in which she sat.

-That you cannot know the terror in a word. That it will not be the worst you fear. That you bring to the last the first sign. That you choose what to disappear.

She gently shut the book.

-That you choose what to disappear, she repeated softly. -That's a nice line, isn't it, Guy? It's not always true, maybe it's not even ever true for ordinary people, but it's hopeful.

She held the book up to his sightless eyes.

-The guy who wrote this book-my friend Jimmy, you don't know him, he's a writer ... I mean, obviously. He wants me to paint a flower for the cover of the paperback edition. I don't know why, but he's a little weird. In a nice way. I mean that in a nice way. No one's ever trusted me ... I mean trusted my painting ... Which amounts to the same thing ...

She trailed off, put the book back on the armrest, balanced precariously.

-It's called Tempo. The book, I mean. I'm probably going to do something for him, but not under my own name. I think one of the things I'm going to choose to disappear is Violet McKnight.

She sat unmoving for some few minutes longer.

-My poor Icarus, murmured Violet in the direction of Guy's unmoving body. -Melted wings, third-degree burns. This is why I never get involved. It was wrong of me to interfere with Plan Charlie. I didn't trust you. Or if I did, I didn't trust my own trust in you, if that makes sense. Christ.

She could not help herself.

-I have no tears left, you see, Guy, there's nothing. Her eyes glittered in the murk. Violet was lying; she was full of tears, she was at the moment a silo of tears, but she would not allow the seams to burst.

-I wanted to give you something in return for what you gave me: hope for hope, so to speak. And what I've ended up giving you is despair for despair, even if you're currently unaware of that despair. Which means I have to carry the double burden of our mutual hopelessness. I'm completely prepared to do that.

-I can't blame Sven. I created him. Or rather, I created the circ.u.mstances that led to his actions. And here you are. And here I am.

-Pleasures of the flesh, believing those pleasures to be without consequence, or if with consequences that those consequences were benign ... never, never, never, never, never. Again. A body can only harvest so much sorrow -And still I will go on. Can you explain that to me, Guy? Can you explain why I continue to exist, in the face of all reason? But what should I do? Expiate my sins in a drastic rejection of the life of men? How would that help anyone but me? How is that anything but selfish?

-I confess my sins, of omission, of commission, I confess them all. I confess only because I know you can't hear me, or, if you can, it's on some level where consciousness cannot penetrate, whether by choice or by a quirk of divine construction that saves the human heart from the worst excesses of its tepid and unfulfilling desires. We are all weak. We are all monstrous.

-And here's the thing, Guy. Here's the reason I fell in love with you-and yes, I know, I never told you that I loved you, that I love you, because it's not in my nature to make dramatic proclamations, and further what good would it have done?-you would not have partic.i.p.ated in the killing of anyone, ever. You would have stood up to any tyrant, and not even for the right reason, necessarily, but simply because you refused to take human cruelty seriously. That was your chief virtue-your profound lack of seriousness.

-I wanted to own that, to possess it, to somehow absorb the part of you that could laugh off any crisis, that seemed in fact to seek out crises in order to laugh in their faces. Does that put you on the side of the angels or the devil? I honestly don't know. He who seeks hard things will have it hard, it says somewhere in the Bible, I think E-mail to Hebrews. Even people who die are granted some kind of finality to their story. Your story has no determinate end. That, to me, is the definition of tragedy. Aristotle might disagree, but he's dead, and his story ended long ago. Probably happily.

-Should some miraculous recovery occur, I will never know. I am a ghost, darling. But I am a ghost who loved you, and I am a ghost who will always remain part of you, living or dead, the boundary line between which grows blurrier every day, if you ask me, which no one ever will.

With that Violet fell silent. She rubbed her eyes with the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, because she was left-handed, which was something very few people knew, because very few people noticed anything about Violet except her remarkable beauty, which wasn't even fourth on the list of her best attributes. But Guy had noticed.

A nurse crept in to check on Guy's machines.

-I'm sorry, said the nurse. -I didn't mean to intrude.

-You didn't intrude, replied Violet. -I'm the intruder. I'm leaving anyway. She got up, slipping the book into a large suede handbag at the foot of her chair, Anything you want me to tell him? asked the nurse. -In case he wakes up.

-That's a really good question, said Violet, disappearing by degrees.

-Tell him that I love him, she said, from the shadows. -Tell him that there is no cure for World Fever, and no need for a cure. That he should start brushing his teeth. That ... you know what?

By this time Violet was no longer Violet but a silhouette, limned by the dim fluorescence of the hospital hall.