As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem

how and why there is a book, and more. I will tell you how there is a shelf for the book, and a house for the shelf, and so on.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t quite follow you.”
    “Listen, my dear fellow. I’m studying the universe. Lack is just a part, a clue. I’ll explain Lack, and then I’ll explain the rest to you, too. The whole thing. That’s my job.”
    “So you’re getting somewhere. You’re learning something about Lack.”
    He screwed up his forehead. “I’ll tell you something, Mr. Engstrand. I have twelve men here, young, headstrong ones, who can think of nothing but physics. Like Soft, or me, ten years ago. They do what I tell them, they work around the clock for me. We will shoot the Lack with sonar, radioactivity, demagnetized particles, tachyons, whatever I can cook up. I am very patient, Mr. Engstrand. I am going to find the signal that can bounce back out, and then I am going to describe the world to which the Lack is a door. Trust me, my dear fellow.”
    “But there’s nothing yet.”
    “Just strawberries.”
    “And in the meantime you’ll tolerate Alice, you’ll tolerate me if I try, you’ll tolerate doddering old Soft.”
    Braxia seemed entertained. “Yes,” he said. “Certainly. I am fond of you already. Take your hours. I welcome you. You think I want to be here all day and all night? No! This weekend I am going to Sonoma.”
    “It’s lovely.”
    “Yes. Besides, I will want you around to see when I have my breakthrough. You can document my discovery.”
    “Okay,” I said. “You make a discovery. I’ll document.” I’d had enough of his bombast now. I turned to leave. Let Braxia and Lack enjoy their strawberries. Somewhere outside the sun was shining, somewhere skies were clear.
    Before I got to the door of the chamber, though, he called to me.
    “I forgot to tell you,” he said. “When she came out of the chamber, she had her shirt on, what is the word?
Inside out
.” His eyes bored into mine, looking for reaction.
    I refused to show one.
    “Alice is your lady, eh?”
    “Yes, Braxia. Alice is my lady. Or was.”
    “You know what? By solving Lack I will cure your Alice for you, give you her back.”
    “I hope so,” I said honestly.

After her second refusal by Lack, Alice fled to her parents, an hour north, for Thanksgiving. From the horn of emptiness to the horn of plenty. I came home to find her stuffing underwear into a weekend suitcase, Evan and Garth standing stiffly to one side, canes lifted. She left without once meeting my eye. The blind men and I stood listening as her car, improperly warmed up, roared out of the driveway.
    “Huh,” said Garth, with deep sourness.
    It rained that weekend. Evan and Garth and I went for walks in the mist. Weather seemed to lull the blind men to silence. It provided proof of an environment, so they no longer had to conjure one up by inventory. Turning their wet faces upward, losing shoes in the sucking mud of campus paths, they were finally convinced that their verbal weather was redundant, that a world loomed out around them.
    I was thinking of Braxia’s assurances. If it was true that Lack would never take Alice, then my struggle with Lack wasn’t for her body, but for her mind, her soul. It was a struggle I felt I had a chance of winning. I sorted through long arguments in favor of myself, and against Lack. I measured my love for Alice against hers for Lack—which was craftier, which more tenacious? I was sure I knew the answer.
    I’d woo her back.
    On Thanksgiving I drove Evan and Garth to a dinner at the blind school, a large flat factory-like building in the middle of a grassy compound, surrounded by a baseball diamond, a parking lot, and a shallow blue swimming pool, drained for the winter and filling with dry leaves and the husks of summer insects. They invited me in, but I refused. I spent the afternoon driving in the hills above the city, nearly the only car, my radio tuned to live coverage of a