35

One more round.

Adam left the gallery. He stood on the street cold and alone, waiting for a taxi to swing by so he could hail it. But in the meantime, none came.

He walked.

Walked and walked, watching squares of sidewalk slide under him, out of his field of vision. He imagined each square was quartered into four triangles and he wasn’t allowed to step on the connecting lines, only on the triangles themselves. When he passed things like sewer drains, those created two more lines that bisected and trisected the triangles into smaller triangles and pentagons. Cracked pavement threw his game for an interesting loop. It was all in his head. Lines and shapes, but no color, only the grey of the pavement, and no sound except the cars and taxis whooshing by. Occasionally he’d hear a distant siren.

Sirens. What eerie, captivating music they made when heard in the distance. Up close, the sound was unbearable and the reality of the situation hit him full in the mouth, rattling his skull.

In the hospital he had looked out the window, surveyed the cityscape and declared it his for the taking. Now, he saw it for what it was: lines and shapes, dull colors and distant sounds.

So he walked, avoiding lines, staring at the ground and before he knew it, he had wandered far, far away from the artsy fartsies. The dull orange of the streetlights gave way to the kaleidoscope of neons and he knew without looking, avoiding lines, that he was back downtown.

One more round.

He wandered off the busy downtown street. The street filled with raucous and unaffable young men and women, into a place he suspected might have put them there. An Irish style pub, winding down for the night.

Adam took a seat at the bar. Everybody wore regular people clothes, there was nothing to distinguish Adam from the rest of them, he wasn’t sure why that depressed him. But, it got him thinking.

It got him thinking about the way he was thinking. His newfound attention to petty detail, wrapped up in himself, not fully aware of his surroundings, sweating the small stuff, avoiding lines. A whole bunch of little things.

It was all a matter of perspective.

“Yeah,” a drunken frat boy hollered next to him, pint glass raised to the heavens, “to perspective!” He cheersed Adam, finished his last gulp of beer, wiped off his mouth with his shirt sleeve, and stumbled toward the door with his arms wrapped around his two friends’ shoulders.

“Well, looks like I’m talking to myself,” Adam said to himself.

“Last call!” yelled the bartender, ringing a bell.

Adam ordered two drinks.

“Hey,” another young man in regular people clothes said, “You’re not crazy if you talk to yourself.”

“Oh yeah,” Adam said.

“Naw, you’re only crazy if you answer yourself. Right Jamie? Right!” The young man, apparently named Jamie, laughed. Adam couldn’t help but chuckle.

Now here was a place where everybody talked to everybody. They were all regular people and had the clothes to prove it. He was finally witness to it. A strong community. He felt comfortable there.

Still, he couldn’t help feeling he was missing the big picture.

***

Adam walked and sat, walked and sat, and thought. He was still thinking about the little things, the little events. Not long ago he was conversing with infinity, now he couldn’t concentrate on anything larger than a moment.

All the little things.

He tried to synthesize the night’s events into a single package. A night’s feast of experiences that refused to be concentrated into a bite-sized morsel.

Man, Adam thought to himself, all the little things.

He walked and then sat, got up, walked a bit more, then sat some more.

Was it that he was suggestible? Did his environment rub off on him? He had always been the rubber, so to speak, up to this point, what had gotten into him?

All the little things.

After all the walking and sitting and thinking there were still some things he’d avoided thinking about, until now.

The sun was coming up.

Three little moments. Three slivers of infinity…