Physically, but mostly mentally for him, it was a mass of a mess that seemed, every day, to cover more of him and make the possibility of ever coming up for air more inconceivable. This was obviously the way to do it. That’s what he told himself anyway. He was getting a little older now, and quite honestly just pure pissed off at the way nobody seemed to listen.

Energy equals mass, was as far as he could get, in the context of Einstein, but it seemed that the two words had a correlation to what was needed: one to get out of the other. Logic, the last resort of the intellect, the defence system that breaks down all that the imagination can construct. Fuck it, he thought, why not? What else was he going to do? Wait like everybody else? For how long? Until you die, of course, like the people in the sprawl.

No, Einstein was right. Energy equals mass times double chaos.

Sleeping in a hotel spiritually inhabited by Einstein from days past had had an effect. An inhabitance. A takeover. Mini though it might be.

He had made his decision.

*

The car pulled into the short drive.

The eighty-year-old baronial studded gates slowly opened on an uneven path and he drove into the underground parking lot. He sat, and sat, contemplating what he had agreed with himself to do. The jazz station 88.1 fuzzed its clarity, as the signal struggled for life under the soil. He had unplugged his own music and now Miles Davis had finally died, God bless him, giving way to an unenthusiastic Frank Sinatra, singing ‘What a Swell Party This Is’ – a Palm Springs resident whose boredom sometimes leapt out of his singing, killing the desire to listen. He would have done it. He did do it. Sold his soul, or more precisely, sacrificed his soul. Maybe that’s what left his singing – maybe his soul just disappeared into the cool desert night; then he would drive back to LA for another fix, replenish his soul and start to sing with genius again.

The plates on the rental were registered to the state of Utah, with a background of the Delicate Arch rock formation. This had instilled in Ever the feeling of being a pioneer, even though he picked the car up in LA. The Wild West plates were now feeling calm, no more wind blasting them up the highway. His shadow crossed the insects, dead on the headlights, as they blinked off on the time delay.

He paused, turned and patted the car before leaving, as if it were a horse.

Dark would bring his doubt, when he had no relation to the rest of the world, nothing to distract him, just surrounded by the black, pushing itself into his clothes and then covering his skin. Dark: he was now getting dark. But he would rise. Rise out of it all, and that was the important thing. Keep on track.