The shiny black rectangle in the corner of the room didn’t even look like a solid object. Everything else in the apartment had weight and age to it. The table lamp at Peter’s side, with the dented plaid shade and dust across its base, seemed to belong to the ring-stained coffee coaster it stood over. It was like the pair of them had grown old together and had stories to tell. But the black rectangle was none of those things. It was a weightless thing hovering in space, like a piece of the world had been cut out. Inside the black void was Peter’s reflection. But the glass was so opaque, he was featureless. Just a shadow against the shadow of the couch against the shadow of the apartment behind it. The clock ticked and Peter picked the remote up off the arm rest. It had too many buttons, but only one of them was red. He pressed it and the black void vanished like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle of the apartment had been put back.

A woman appeared. She was standing behind a counter with glossy red lipstick, bright across a wide smile. Her voice was comforting. So were her eyes, which looked directly at Peter like the pair of them were in the same room together. She was telling him all about the wonderful things the object she was standing over could do. How it could blend food and cook food and cook two types of food all at once. But it didn’t really matter what she was saying. The fact she was even there at all made something very comforting happen. She made the ticking go away.

Peter eased back into the chair and the springs sank even lower to accommodate him. The woman in the black rectangle smiled and Peter smiled back. And the clock was gone and with it, the silence.

The little red canoe sat upon the carpet of stars. A paddle, set down across the width of it, dripped steady beads of water. But they never made it to the lake. The droplets fell upwards, falling across the star-strewn sky. Peter gazed up, watching the stars quiver then re-form as the ripple passed among them. He looked down at his feet. They were no longer being held by water. There was nothing beneath them now but the stars. What was above was now below and Peter was no longer standing or floating, but somewhere between. He set one foot down, neither held by solid space nor passing through it, and quietly approached the canoe.

Cooper was lying naked across the hull of the canoe. Peter’s eyes grazed the darkness of the hair beneath his arms and groin. Blades of blond hair spilled back from his face across the rib of the canoe and those two dark eyes looked back.

“Where have you been?” Peter asked.

“Here,” said Cooper.

“Where?”

“Right here, Pete.”