“There’s something else,” he said. “The meeting we just re-experienced … was the last time we saw each other for about twenty years.”

She just stared at him.

“You even considered suicide once,” he said, not looking at her.

“Suicide? Why? Not me, not in a million years,” she exclaimed. “Tell me. What have I forgotten?”

But Lawrence was gone, and the environment itself was disappearing.

Chapter Fifteen

Oversoul Seven Has His Troubles and Will Tries to Drop Out

“Ikeep telling you, suicide is not on the agenda,” Seven was saying. “I’m just not getting through to you at all, am I?” Seven sighed, not even trying to hide his disappointment. He’d appeared as the compassionate but wise young graduate teacher, and as the compassionate but wise old man as well, but Will was in such a rotten mood that nothing seemed to reach him at all. “I am supposed to be your soul,” Seven said, “but we certainly don’t seem to have much in common. I wonder if someone made a mistake somewhere?” Almost absentmindedly, Seven lit up a joint (of marijuana, dear reader) and puffed it in just the correct tender fashion.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Will asked. “It’s all sham. I know that. You’re just smoking grass to make me feel at home or bridge the generation gap or something. And this classroom is all a dream hallucination too. And waking life is the same thing. Even dreaming, I’m not stupid, for God’s sake.”

Seven, as the old man, lowered his eyes and began to pace the classroom floor—perfect hardwood, sun splashing across the wood in just the right fashion—all gone to waste. He started to feel sorry for himself.

“You’re some guru,” Will said accusingly. “You can’t teach me anything anyhow, because all learning is meaningless. Everything is senseless. I know that I’m asleep in bed, and awake here at the same time. So what? This place is as senseless as earth is. Or life is. I don’t belong anywhere. And when your own soul doesn’t like you, you may as well give up.” Will finished speaking and stood staring at Seven broodingly, dark brows raised loftily; the picture of young, nonchalant, studied, contemptuous disdain. Then he said evenly, “Life is meaningless, and I don’t intend to dignify it by staying around.”

“You’ve got to stay around.” Seven shouted, trying to think of something. “You can’t commit suicide anyhow without taking a course in methods. If you have your heart set on suicide, you might as well do it right. Besides,” he added, “suicide is a hard act to follow.”

This time Will came toward Seven threateningly, fists raised, yelling at the top of his lungs. “I don’t want to follow it with anything. You still don’t understand. I want it to end. I want me to end.”