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Back A Fractured Infinity
Chapters (41)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. 1
  4. 2
  5. 3
  6. 4
  7. 5
  8. 6
  9. 7
  10. 8
  11. 9
  12. 10
  13. 11
  14. 12
  15. 13
  16. 14
  17. 15
  18. 16
  19. 17
  20. 18
  21. 19
  22. 20
  23. 21
  24. 22
  25. 23
  26. 24
  27. 25
  28. 26
  29. 27
  30. 28
  31. 29
  32. 30
  33. 31
  34. 32
  35. 33
  36. 34
  37. 35
  38. 36
  39. 37
  40. Acknowledgements
  41. About the Author

I’d like to remind you that you are incapable of caring for anyone else. You can save yourself the inevitable life-ruining disaster that’s six months or a year away by just bowing out now. If you weren’t so stubborn, you’d see that I’m just here to help.

(The STORYTELLER VOICE pops his head out, stage right. He shoves a vaudeville-style hook out and tugs NAREK off stage)

THE STORYTELLER VOICE (VOICEOVER)

I think we’re fucking done with you for now.

I know that every time you meet someone you compare them to everyone else you’ve ever met. That we’re all stock characters. Here comes another emotionally unavailable guy with trust issues, but this new model comes with a cowboy hat so maybe that’s enough to keep things interesting. And I’m not some saint who gets his heart trampled all the time, either. You don’t get to be alone at my age without reading the character treatments and thumbing ahead in the script in your head. He’s going to do this and I’ll get mad, or here’s how I’ll disappoint him, or I’m too comfortable to compromise for someone else so why bother.

But now I was locking everyone else out of the room and watching Yusuf—just him, for the first time, maybe—scrawl tiny, precise letters on the window. Because he wasn’t just not Narek. He seemed happy to let me in instead of keeping us as separate islands. Because you don’t meet a lot of people who, after you tell them you don’t get something, are so pumped about trying to help you understand that they draw diagrams on a window without bothering to slide on some underwear first.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that with all the people I’ve ever met—all of the friends, the lovers, the doc subjects, everyone self-producing themselves into what they think people want them to be—Yusuf wasn’t a stock character. He kept me guessing. And the same way he’d told me about studying his whole life to try to figure out the big unanswered questions in physics, I wanted to keep looking into what made him tick, too. I didn’t want to skip to the end of the script. I wanted to go along for the ride.

He kept drawing on the windows until he ran out of glass and then he came back to bed where we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

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