bad or it was time to crash. Back before whatever had happened to him at the outlet mall, the constant motion had been because he enjoyed the movement after the intense part of the nods faded, and also because he’d always had an internal, ticking nervousness right under his skin.
Now, though, he got nothing out of his numb ambulation, the pavement under his feet passing like the minutes and the hours, unnoticed, unaccounted for. He had walked all day long, randomly making big fat circles through the neighborhoods of downtown while the sun rose, peaked, and fell back into the horizon. In spite of his marathon of miles, there was no pain in his feet or legs. No blisters. No need for food or drink or the bathroom. And he mourned the loss of all of those inconveniences, the absence of the nagging aches and pains of humanity. As he continued further, he realized he no longer had the sense that he was, in spite of his lack of assets, status, and success, exactly like all the other men and women who strode by him, drove by him, flew in planes above him, worked in buildings around him.
Then again, he was no longer human, was he.
The disconnection from everybody else made him feel as if things were closing in on him, although he wasn’t sure exactly what the “things” were, and had no idea how to avoid them. This lose/lose created a buzzing in his head that was something he had previously been able to needle away, and the fact that his addiction was no longer an option made him feel his dislocation and anxiety all the more acutely. As he struggled to keep it together, he realized that the drugs had been an artificial, but highly reliable, horizon for him, a far-off land that was always available whenever he felt boxed in or cornered—which had been, and continued to be, most of the time.
No more travel for him, though. His passport had been revoked.
When his boots finally halted, he was surprised, and he looked down at them with the expectation that they would explain themselves. There was no answer coming, however, and when his brain gave them a nudge to keep going, they stayed where they were.
It was as if he were on autopilot, and the person in charge of his remote had punched a button—
His head tilted up, sure as if there was a puppet string attached to his eyebrows and the guy running this Muppet version of himself was getting him ready to say a line of dialogue.
Well. What do you know. He was on a narrow street that was littered with big trash: soiled mattresses, a kitchen sink, a refrigerator with the door removed. Somebody had clearly decamped out of an apartment and wanted the city to take care of their shit. Or maybe it was a renovation job, although in this kind of zip code, demolition was more likely.
In the dim light, which did not compromise his vision at all, a figure stepped out of a shallow doorway two blocks down. Mr. F immediately recognized them, though they were a stranger: It was like seeing a distant family member, one who you couldn’t put a name to, but who you recalled from weddings and funerals when you were young.
He knew this other man. This other man knew him.
Not that either of them were men anymore.
And the one controlling Mr. F was insisting they interact. They hit Mr. F’s Go Forward toggle, and like any battery-powered device, his body was ready to do what it was told. Meanwhile, the other lesser seemed to be waiting for him to do something, say something—and that was when Mr. F got real with himself. He hadn’t actually been pacing in random directions all day long. He’d been avoiding the others, shifting among the streets in a defensive fashion so there was no chance of intersection.
Like the asphalt grid of downtown was a radar screen and the other blips warships he had to steer clear of.
As his right foot started to lift, he forced it back down onto the pavement, and when the boot came up again, it was bizarre to find himself not in control of his own body. Then again, after years of heroin addiction? Like he wasn’t used to being a servant to a master outside of himself?
Forcing his body to obey his brain, not this external will, he took a step backward. And another.