Kierk wakes up, coming to awareness amid books, notes. Last night, there had been something important. He had stayed up late reading, thinking, sketching things out about consciousness, until it had all become a dreamy blur. Yet he remembers being sure he had made some sort of breakthrough. A hand goes out, finds a piece of paper which had been torn out of a notebook lying in bed with him, with large handwriting sprawling across it. Sitting up in bed he holds it up in front of him, squinting at the hasty and excited writing.

“Consciousness . . . is the . . . stone of the world.”

Looking around for anything else, he puzzles his face. Finding nothing, he repeats the phrase. Standing, Kierk shuts off his alarm and meanders to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He laughs in the mirror, toothbrush in his mouth.

“Consciousness is the stone of the world!”

His phone buzzes on the dresser, next to the pamphlet from the preacher last night. Rushing back with his toothbrush in his mouth he looks at the name of the caller.

Carmen and Kierk are sitting in a coffee shop on the Lower East Side. Neither is sure if this is a date. On arriving they both apologize for Friday night simultaneously. Then, standing outside, they had shared a cigarette. Carmen, after realizing that she never smokes but always does with Kierk, thought—bad sign, Carmen, old girl. She’d also done something today she almost never does anymore, and so currently her face is made-up, her lips a violet matched by her eye shadow, her hair straightened.

Inside they have a little corner to themselves, drinking coffee in two plush chairs, a low round table between them. There is a large open window at seat height right beside them so it is basically like they are sitting outside, and the temperature is perfect, a rare day where there is a playful breeze and a cool blue sky vividly streaked with clouds, as if they are sitting next to a large mural so realistic that tickling gusts are drifting over from the world of the painting.

First, they talk about Kierk’s encounter with the street preacher, and the pamphlet that he found, which he shows to Carmen. He wants to go alone, but she convinces him they should go together to the next meeting of the Following Brothers of Christ to check it out. The conversation moves on to other things between refills.