and around, they would pass a window through which he could see again the endless snowfall and the grayish-white sky.
“How can a town this size have all these fucking stairs?” he asked Rusty, the guy in front of him.
“Everything’s connected,” Rusty said, racing up another flight, huffing and puffing his way down a narrow passage scattered with paint cans and an assortment of discarded power tools. There were other people above them—he could hear the clunking footsteps, the occasional laughter—but they’d passed out of sight, and he was tired of following Rusty’s back.
A window appeared just up ahead, and instead of chasing the group to the next floor, Robbie stepped toward the little landing that contained the rectangle of dim light. A massive spiderweb drooped from the corner of the ceiling, and the remains of a potted plant, long dead, hung in the window frame. He pushed aside the plant with one hand and held his other hand in front of the windowpane, where a thin line of cold air crept through a jagged crack in the glass. Outside the streetlamps winked on and there was a half-light over the hills and he didn’t know whether it was dawn or dusk. There had been many, many times in the past when he hadn’t known whether it was dawn or dusk, and generally he hadn’t cared. Right now, though, releasing the plant so that it swayed back and forth on its creaky chain, staring out the window at the line of pencil-thin fir trees that formed the outline of the hills, everything beyond enveloped in a blanket of snowy white, he had a gnawing feeling that he should know the time of day, as if the time of day were of vital importance to him somehow, and a kind of irritation grew in his brain, the irritation that almost always came from some distant connection to the world of times and schedules and responsibilities, came whenever he felt it incumbent upon him to do a thing in the way that other people did it.
Why he should feel that particular form of irritation right now was a bit of a mystery—he had just been hanging out with some people over at a house, and there had been a young woman of malleable temperament and soft breasts and hardly any scruples, right? And then those guys had come outside and they had carted him off and they had gone in a door somewhere and run up and down a lot of stairs and…that had been less than a minute ago. And yet he could barely remember it, as if it were something he’d done yesterday or last week. And hadn’t the light out the window changed rather abruptly? The hills had sunk into darkness, so that it was almost impossible for him to make out their silhouettes against the backdrop of cold, gray clouds. Could he have gone into some weird trance? Of course—after all, that too had happened before. But he hadn’t really had a whole lot to drink, comparatively, and he felt pretty goddamn sober, if you wanted to know the truth, and in fact a little bored, and now maybe even a little bit alarmed because…huh.
He heard something, and hearing something brought to mind the fact that he had been hearing almost nothing for quite some time, just the whistling of wind through the windowpane and the steady sting of snowflakes on the glass. It had been a long time since he’d heard voices or footsteps, for instance, and yet now he was hearing both, only he couldn’t tell whether the footsteps were above or below, or what the voice was saying in the air around his head, except that it was one distinct word being repeated over and over. Then someone was breathing in his ear. “Robbie?” a familiar voice said.
It was Julia. His eyes closed, though he didn’t mean for them to, and inside his head there was a whirl of light and sound, and the air turned bitter cold, and then he was again in one of the long corridors, one of the infinite passages that you came across every minute or two in this insane place, came to after running up and down more flights of broken stairs, finding yet
“How can a town this size have all these fucking stairs?” he asked Rusty, the guy in front of him.
“Everything’s connected,” Rusty said, racing up another flight, huffing and puffing his way down a narrow passage scattered with paint cans and an assortment of discarded power tools. There were other people above them—he could hear the clunking footsteps, the occasional laughter—but they’d passed out of sight, and he was tired of following Rusty’s back.
A window appeared just up ahead, and instead of chasing the group to the next floor, Robbie stepped toward the little landing that contained the rectangle of dim light. A massive spiderweb drooped from the corner of the ceiling, and the remains of a potted plant, long dead, hung in the window frame. He pushed aside the plant with one hand and held his other hand in front of the windowpane, where a thin line of cold air crept through a jagged crack in the glass. Outside the streetlamps winked on and there was a half-light over the hills and he didn’t know whether it was dawn or dusk. There had been many, many times in the past when he hadn’t known whether it was dawn or dusk, and generally he hadn’t cared. Right now, though, releasing the plant so that it swayed back and forth on its creaky chain, staring out the window at the line of pencil-thin fir trees that formed the outline of the hills, everything beyond enveloped in a blanket of snowy white, he had a gnawing feeling that he should know the time of day, as if the time of day were of vital importance to him somehow, and a kind of irritation grew in his brain, the irritation that almost always came from some distant connection to the world of times and schedules and responsibilities, came whenever he felt it incumbent upon him to do a thing in the way that other people did it.
Why he should feel that particular form of irritation right now was a bit of a mystery—he had just been hanging out with some people over at a house, and there had been a young woman of malleable temperament and soft breasts and hardly any scruples, right? And then those guys had come outside and they had carted him off and they had gone in a door somewhere and run up and down a lot of stairs and…that had been less than a minute ago. And yet he could barely remember it, as if it were something he’d done yesterday or last week. And hadn’t the light out the window changed rather abruptly? The hills had sunk into darkness, so that it was almost impossible for him to make out their silhouettes against the backdrop of cold, gray clouds. Could he have gone into some weird trance? Of course—after all, that too had happened before. But he hadn’t really had a whole lot to drink, comparatively, and he felt pretty goddamn sober, if you wanted to know the truth, and in fact a little bored, and now maybe even a little bit alarmed because…huh.
He heard something, and hearing something brought to mind the fact that he had been hearing almost nothing for quite some time, just the whistling of wind through the windowpane and the steady sting of snowflakes on the glass. It had been a long time since he’d heard voices or footsteps, for instance, and yet now he was hearing both, only he couldn’t tell whether the footsteps were above or below, or what the voice was saying in the air around his head, except that it was one distinct word being repeated over and over. Then someone was breathing in his ear. “Robbie?” a familiar voice said.
It was Julia. His eyes closed, though he didn’t mean for them to, and inside his head there was a whirl of light and sound, and the air turned bitter cold, and then he was again in one of the long corridors, one of the infinite passages that you came across every minute or two in this insane place, came to after running up and down more flights of broken stairs, finding yet
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