Kierk is writing in his Hello Kitty notebook by the light of a lamppost. He doesn’t know what time it is but he’s taking burning swigs from a small bottle of whiskey he bought from a corner store because he doesn’t want to sober up, no, not yet, not when words are flying off like colored scarves from a magician’s hat; he’s spastic, impulsive, expunging sentences in rages, generating more in rapture, not realizing people passing down the midnight steps of Union Square are looking at him as he smacks his forehead and pulls his hair and mouths words aloud, shouting to feel them leave him like Flaubert, standing up and then sitting back down, clenching his fists in self-loathing and belletristic anger. He rips up the page he’s working on, stuffs it in his mouth and chews it in anger, shreds the soggy mess between his teeth, grinding it and feeling his jaw muscles work, and then it’s spewing out of his mouth as he starts laughing hysterically. He keels over and sprays the inky mush over the concrete steps. Making a face, he picks the bits of remaining paper out of his mouth, then, still laughing, gets unsteadily to his feet. He knows he is a dense knot of metaphors faking at being a man, that he is the mere shambles of an apology with nothing to apologize for—no theory of consciousness, no writings—a mere strawman dissolving into parts, a pile of clothes on the floor, a poor synecdoche, a thing like that can’t impact the world anyway . . .

SATURDAY

Kierk wakes up to music. His shoulder blades ache as he rolls over on the floor. Hungover, he opens one eye onto the expanse of the carpet. His thoughts begin in a sluggish smog, gray themes and colors, but then, like breaking cloud cover, a thing rising and set free into the blue—in drinking he has reset everything, he feels, his mind is scrubbed, tilt-a-whirl, all of yesterday’s habits gone. The music is coming from his damnable phone.