“Have you? That’s interesting. It must be commoner than I’d realized.” Into the following silence, as if into one of Noteless’s chasms, my morale plunged, so Danzig’s next gambit was a life preserver. “You’ll notice we’re without menus, Thespian!”

“Uh, yes.”

“I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for you the great speciality”-there it was again-“of the house. I wonder if you’ve heard of the ‘zillion-dollar frittata’?”

“It, uh, rings a bell.”

“Prepare to be amazed. The dish entails six eggs, one whole Maine lobster, and ten ounces of Sevruga caviar.” Danzig liked to enumerate every digit of his wealth: eggs, ounces, toilets, zillion-dollar frittatas eaten at fifty-thousand-dollar tête-à-têtes. Would we count turds afterward?

“We’ll share it,” I said, in fear. Despite barely touching my three o’clock cheeseburger, I couldn’t locate my appetite. The prospect of caviar swam before my eyes like oily black phosphenes.

“No, no, it’s entirely yours,” Danzig assured me. “I’ll derive pleasure watching you enjoy it. Arjuna’s not eating, I think, and I’ll be having French toast, which incidentally is superb here. And needless to say a round of mimosas for the table.”

“Needless to say.” Had I said this aloud? I ought to check my sarcasm, unless it sounded only in my head’s echo chamber. I fluttered fingers at the waiter, my arm seeming too heavy to lift. “Actually, I could use some coffee-”

“Certainly!” Danzig got one of those phantasms hopping to it. “And music, music,” he said. “Being a man of the theater…”

“I’m sorry?”

“I presume that as a man of the theater, you’d want there to be accompaniment, a soundtrack of some kind.” Had the evening fragmented to non sequiturs? Did I miss some transition? “Perhaps you’ll dance with my wife, she’s an outstanding tangoist. I can’t keep up with her!” Arjuna’s cheeks reddened with shame, her gaze riveted to some distance. Had Danzig secured a suite in the hotel? What privileges did he think he’d won at that auction?

“I…I thank you, please forgive me if, uh, I have to take a rain check, I’m sure you’d be a lovely dancing partner…” As I stammered out these words, silent hands deposited a cup of black coffee (tiny oil rainbow swirling at its center) at one corner of my vision, a flute of juice and champagne (orange seeds swirling at the bottom) at the other, then pushed my bread plate aside and swept a fuming calamity across the table and under the spotlight, filling my view. It was as though someone had dissected a creature whose fleece was pallid egg, to reveal a scalded skeleton of lobster and spilled vitals of glistening caviar. The dish’s oval tray resembled a medical basin, its contents seeming to stretch and bloat before me. I crossed my legs and reclined in my chair, my senses churning. “I… uh, I haven’t had such a great day,” I heard myself say. “I got some terrible news…” It was the last thing I’d meant to discuss. “Someone I love… very much…” I tested the coffee cup with my palms, but it was too hot to dare sip.

“Yes, we know all about it,” said Arjuna Danzig, her eyes brimming. “You poor, poor man.”

“We want you to know it’s a wonderful thing, what you’re doing for this city,” said Rossmoor. “People sit up and notice a thing like this. I want you to be assured that Mayor Arnheim personally appreciates it.”

“He does?”

“Oh, certainly. He’ll find some way of conveying his gratitude. For the time being, we’re conveying ours.”

“She’s got cancer,” I said helplessly, as if they might not have completely understood. “If they can’t find a way to bring the crew down, she might die up there.”

“Oh, she’ll be all right,” said Rossmoor. “It’s you we need to worry about. You must take care of yourself.”

“I’m cheating on her. I have a lover.”

“Well, that’s fine, too,” said Rossmoor benevolently. “You mustn’t tell anyone, of course. But anything you do is just fine with us.”

I looked to Arjuna, who only nodded her sympathy.

“She’s got a tumor in her foot,” I said, wanting it to mean something to them, something more than it meant to me.

Arjuna Danzig took my hand. “Perhaps it was the space walk,” she suggested, with gentle solicitude.

“The space walk?”

“Well, it can’t be sheer coincidence,” reasoned Arjuna. “First, a walk in space. Next…” She appeared sorry to say it aloud, but after a moment’s silence, reluctantly connected the dots. “Next a cancer in her foot.”

“I’m not sure a space walk works the way you’re thinking.” At that moment my levees were breached again by the uncanny chocolate smell, catalyzing with the egg and lobster medley already fogging my sinuses. I staggered out of my chair and backward from the table, out of the golden circle, frittata steam rising into the cone of spotlight. “Do you… smell… that?” I asked.

“Smell what?” said Arjuna.

“He means the chocolate,” said Rossmoor.

“Yes, yes, a kind of chocolate smell,” I said. “It’s been happening for days-”

“I told you!” said Rossmoor to Arjuna.

“For me it’s been more of a tone,” said Arjuna, sounding truly puzzled. “It just began again, now that you mention it, a kind of ringing-”

I was cheered to think Perkus wasn’t completely alone. I’d find a way to let him know. But now I had to flee the mingled odors, flee Rossmoor’s silk sleeves and toxic munificence, Arjuna’s pity. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to go, I’m not feeling well…” Invisible waiters rustled nearby. I envied their simple, anonymous lives. “Please,” I called into the darkness, “please… get me a taxicab.” I flagged with both hands, struggling for balance, as if a cabbie could somehow see me here, and veer inside from the street. My eyes misting, the table before me fragmented into kaleidoscopic glints. “Sorry-” I said again.

“It was lovely seeing you,” said Arjuna.

“Stay strong!” woofed Rossmoor.

CHAPTER

Twelve

Enduring a flu alone in an apartment has always included a certain psychedelic aspect, it seems to me. But it is a psychedelia of the body, not the mind. A sustained, sapping fever is a reeducation in the true weight of a blunt human collection of arms and legs, of a lollipop head wobbling on a woozy neck, and in the sensation of a throw pillow’s scrape against ribs as sensitive as a lover’s lips. To taste, in that condition, Tom Kha Gai, a white cardboard quart of which may be easily summoned to your door, there handed over by a Thai delivery boy who’s left his bicycle with the doorman downstairs, is to feel coconut-sweet chicken and tomato broth flood your ravaged pipes as succor, the soup replacing lost spinal fluids directly with each mouthful. The distances between bathroom and couch, then back to huddle within womb of mattress and duvet, becomes an epic slog, full of feeble triumphs. Comfortably arranging for oneself a clean glass of water, a paperback or magazine, and a television remote, a magician’s feat. Crossing a room to lift a ringing phone’s receiver, an Everest ascent.

I was sick for a week and a half. That first night I just managed to drag myself home and call Oona Laszlo to cancel, even as I fell into a teeth-chattering swoon. Oona wasn’t vastly sympathetic, told me to find her when I felt better-at that point I still credited my illness to the events of the day before. It all seemed mixed up with cheeseburgers, champagne, and chocolate, at least for the first Swenty-Cour hours, which I spent mostly shivering over my toilet. After I’d racked myself dry, the sickness decamped from my gut and percolated outward, to the very ends of my fingertips and eyelids, which felt thick and sodden as ravioli when I shut them over my poor eyes.

Oona did pass through on the second day, but she wasn’t much in the way of a nursemaid, and I was hardly company. She didn’t remove her coat, just unloaded a batch of recycled magazines, Vanity Fair, People, The New York Observer, onto the couch, where I lay cocooned in a stained blanket, surrounded by half-finished mugs of Theraflu. In the wavery depths of my fever I recall monologuing to her all about chaldrons, unburdening myself totally, but I’m not convinced she was really present for the confession. I might have been babbling at Oona-phantasms, perhaps not even speaking aloud. On the fourth day I’d begun feeling stronger, possibly hungry for the first time, and capable of self-pity, and I rang her number, mildly surprised she hadn’t checked up on me a second time, after witnessing my early dejection.