With a clack the cue ball traces a line across the table, tapping the eight toward the right pocket. But as it rolls the eight instead comes to rest at the trapezoidal edge of that pocket’s mouth while meanwhile the cue ball itself listlessly meanders into the far left pocket, tips in, and Kierk scratches.

For a moment there is silence. Then Mike, laughing, throws his hands up in victory.

“Good game, buddy!” he says loudly, already putting up his pool cue.

Kierk is still staring at the leather pocket as if expecting more from it. He can’t believe he lost.

Alex calls out—“Kierk, funny how the first three games you were shooting with your left hand. And this game you played with your right.”

This time, Carmen does fall off her stool with laughter. “You were robbed. You were robbed,” she says, recovering.

Reaching over, Kierk takes her Manhattan out of her hand, cheering her—“So it goes.” Finishing his sip—“I’ll be back with your winnings, Mike.”

Eventually he returns to the table bearing a tray full of pitchers and shots. Everyone does one. Mike is red-faced and avuncular. He keeps clapping Kierk on the arm, saying, “Good game,” again and again.

In no time at all, Carmen and Kierk, leaning in to hear one another above the din, have separated off and are talking in fast tones about life, literature, science, language, purpose. How a personal worldline is guided by both teleonomy and teleology.

Finally Alex interrupts them, informing them that they have been huddled up together for an hour, that it’s unfair, particularly to him, and that they simply must do another shot with him.

Soon after that the bar becomes a toy workshop that Kierk is moving through, drunk on airs. Carmen’s face floats in his field of vision, too much stimulation for Kierk to make sense of. Fuck, he needs a cigarette. Intentions are brighter than lights. Kierk, outside somehow, maybe he left for a cigarette, he can’t remember, is inhaling the deep, aquatic air, and thinking—not me, not me, I can see things clearly, can’t I? I am the fish who learns.

Drunkenness takes him away, a dark carriage of smoke and gestures, one thought still echoing, bouncing off the buildings and into the streets, slipping down the drains, finding its way to the sea—I am the fish who learns.