I was still at the end of the yard, right at the line between this impossible building site and total quiet. Moving my head, even just a little, took me from silence to commotion and back again. All the lights in the other houses were out, all the streetlamps too. For a second I thought there was a flicker of something at our place, at Henry’s, a blown-out candle maybe, a lighter flame, but when I looked over it was dark, same as the rest of them, so I couldn’t be sure of what I’d seen. I couldn’t be sure of anything, come to think of it.

“Can you explain though?” I said as six chairs marched through the front window and onto the lawn. “Please? I mean, to me?”

“Is it wearing off?” he said.

“Is what wearing off?” I said, and I ran through my list of known hallucinogens: acid, mushrooms, mescaline, DMT, ket, PCP.

“What is it?” I said. “Which one have I taken?”

“Stop,” he said. “Jude. You haven’t taken anything. I just softened the border, that’s all.”

“What border?”

“Between us. So you can see what I see, without losing it.”

“I am losing it though,” I said. “I really think I might be.”

He walked across the dark lawn and put his hands on my shoulders, like I was a lighter-than-air thing, a thing that needed holding down. The glow from his hands fell through me like a faraway firework.

“How is this possible?” I said, and Novo stretched his arms above his head and licked his lips and smiled at me.

“Anything is. I told you. Just breathe, Jude. It’s all good. You can trust me.”

He pulled us both out of the noise, into the sleeping street, and he put his finger to his lips, his soft sigh lifting the stooped flowers, stirring the leaves high in the trees.

“Are you real?” I asked him, and he smiled.

“I don’t know. Are you?”

“Am I dreaming?” I said. “Are we in a dream?”

“Maybe. Probably. What would you do if we were?”

I knew the answer instantly, felt it without thinking, a stone in my belly, how pockmarked with letdowns the rest of my life was going to be if I woke up. I knew all this, and more, even though we’d only just met.

“That’s easy,” I told him. “I’d just stay asleep.”

THIRTEEN