The laws of physics had failed him. John was falling, pinwheeling through an empty, private space, as if he'd lost his grip on the space-time continuum, and he couldn't remember how he'd gotten home. He knew he must have been delivered through the city of Los Angeles, and yet it surprised him to be in the penthouse. He knew Gordon was home, and yet it surprised him when he found his brother half-lounging on the sunken couch in the living room, reading a surfing magazine—the cover was a surfer caught in a wave, a black speck against a blue, tubular ocean—the great swallowing.
"Hey," said Gordon, looking up at him.
There was a glass wall separating them, and his words were muffled, like hearing someone talk through water. John was an exhibit, a performance art behind laminated safety glass, two sheets of glass sandwiching an interlayer of acoustic polyvinyl butyral and pyrolytic coating.
"Hey."
"Long day?"
When had it begun?
"Yeah."
An era of shuffling paper from one side of the lab to the other. A brief break for coffee and severing family ties with his father. John felt nauseated, seasick like that boat trip around the island in rough weather. Why had he done it? Why had he done anything this week? This month? This year? That thought was an axe swinging just beyond his vision, a judgment waiting to separate the neck from his body.
Long day.
John wanted to get into bed and pull the covers over him. Shut out the world, accept his place as a spineless, nerveless creature who walked on his knees.
"Scott told me it's been a bad few weeks."
"Okay."
"Don't be mad or anything, but he kinda told me what happened."
"And I suppose now you want a long, detailed discussion on the topic."
"No, we don't have to do that."
"Good," said John. "I told Dad about your party."
That should have gotten a reaction out of him, but Gordon only said, "I invited Alan."
Oh.
"He's flying in."
The words didn't process. They dropped like a coin through a slot, jamming in the machinery.
"It's just a party, John. It doesn't have to mean anything."
A last part of John's irritation boiled up and steamed off, leaving behind inert, pulpy tissue. Alan was coming. An ever-tightening thought. John couldn't think about it. He had to cut the power to that part of his brain, sever the vessels supplying the energy that turned the same thought over and over and over. "Of course not."
"So it's okay?"
"Okay is a relative term." John wasn't angry at Gordon. He just didn't know what to do with him in his living room. "It's fine."
"Scott's not here."
I don't care. "Okay."
"He left."
"Yeah, I got that."
"He'll be out for a while."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because he took something from your room."