“Fuck, don’t burn me.”

Elizabeth is trying to pull a tattered white T-shirt over my head, but I’m still hooked. She’s dressing me like I’m a baby, a big, smoking baby. We hit another corner and I fall off the van wall, landing on top of Elizabeth, who crashes over and lies there, crying. I stub the cigarette out on the metal floor, sit up, and put my arms through the sleeves. It is my superhero costume. The queen of the bolt. I close my eyes and can hear the Stoic say, Devotion to what is right is simple, devotion to what is wrong is complex and admits infinite variations.

I turn around at Security. They’re standing there, Elizabeth and Birdie, in Tyrian purple bridesmaid dresses, arms around each other, Seneca floating at the left. But the chief cause of this disease, in my opinion, is an attitude of disdain for a normal existence. They don’t move, and I can’t stand that. Birdie’s crying now too. “Tits to the wind, Serrie. Tits to the wind.”

And I turn my back on the floating Stoic and the Bail-out Squad.

I see the ocean from the airplane window. In my mind there is a whisper . . . Beyond all things is the sea, Seraphina. Before Seneca can materialize, the man beside me coughs and pokes his elbow into my ribs. He wants to talk about jet lag. I don’t want to talk about jet lag. I want a gin and tonic. I want five gin and tonics. Anything to bring back the blur. I have twelve hours of travel ahead and I want to spend it in a haze, with fuzzy voices and muted sounds lulling me into sleep so time will blink by. So the imagined philosopher won’t appear. I want to forget everything I’ve ever learned. I want oblivion right now. But the man beside me wants to talk about the “New Canadians” (he means Asians). In his trimmed beard, nice shirt, clean glasses, casual shoes, I-have-a-nice-home-in-the-suburbs-with-a-few-kids-and-a-wife way, he wants to talk about “the invasion.”

“I haven’t been to Vancouver,” I say.

“Aren’t you going to Vancouver?” he wants to know.

“I get off in Toronto, and then I’m heading for Zurich.” I yawn although I want to scream.

He loves chocolate and the Alps.

I love the Walkman Cindy packed and I reach to put it on. There is one really old cassette, John Denver, singing “Sweet Surrender.”

The man keeps talking. I smile and touch my headphones. He keeps talking. Fuck. I mean what’s with some people? I say, “I can’t hear you.”

He says I should lower the volume.

I tell him it’s stuck at ten and lie back and shut my eyes. I’m not the kind of girl to cry to country music. I prefer a lyre. He pokes me in the side and asks if I want dinner. I want him to shut up. I wonder if he will have a brain aneurism. I say I’m sick. The dial moves and the loud music distorts into perfection but I know he is still talking. At least the Stoic has abandoned me.