Chapter 51: Drinking and Puzzle-Solving

A few days later I came home and as usual the house smelled of Indian cooking
spices, but that day the house was unusually silent. It was early November so the days
were getting shorter but were still pretty warm in Pasadena. The front door was wide
open when I walked in. When the airconditioning wasnt needed Thomas sometimes
opened all the windows and doors to let the air circulate, which seemed a little risky
given old!looking paintings hanging in the front hall. I found Thomas in the kitchen,
several pots on the stove, all of the windows open. "e had a tall glass of something clear
in front of him and his big flowerpot!looking charcoal oven was smoking slightly on the
back porch. "e was sitting at the kitchen table frowning at the Times
#
crossword pu$$le,
pencil in hand. Ne%t to his left arm was a tray with si% neatly!arranged fist!si$ed balls of
shiny dough. "e waved at me without looking up from his pu$$le. &'our letter word for
needle case,( he said.
&)tui,( I said. I ru*etrieved a pint glass from the cupboard and opened the free$er
door to fill it with ice. There was a half gallon of Tan+ueray ne%t to the icemaker.
&This cannot , be correct,( he said. &No wait. 'our letter word for "awaiian
goose. "and me the gin, por favor.(
&Nene,( I said. I filled my glass with ice and handed him the gin bottle. "e
refilled his glass, which was as large as mine, and handed the bottle back to me, which I
replaced in the free$er &I made you some lemonade,( he said.
&-h, thanks.( I replaced the gin, closed the free$er, and opened the refrigerator,
where I found a half gallon pitcher of lemonade. Ne%t to it was a bottle of .chweppes
tonic water, so I handed that to Thomas. "e seemed startled to see it at first, but then
added a splash to his glass.
&Now I must say I re+uire a lime wedge,( he said, almost apologetically. &Also
White "ouse dog. 'our letters.(
&'ala,( I said, filling my glass with lemonade. I tasted it. It was good. I held out
the container of lime wedges and he took one as he nodded and scribbled in an answer as
I replaced the *ug of lemonade. &"ow do you know these/( he asked, without looking
up.
&Ive done crosswords a lot,( I said. I sat and took the front page of the paper.
Not much was happening President 0arter was smiling )verything was going to "ell in
a handbasket. I took out the sports section. )ven though the 1odgers had won the .eries
*ust a couple of months ago, the news was pretty grim. 2arvey and 3opes and 0ey were
going elsewhere.
4
Wheres 0andy/( I asked.
&0andide. "e has chemistry lab on Tuesdays. 'irst man in space, seven letters.(
#
In 3os Angeles &the Times( is the Los Angeles Times to anybody with any sense,
4
'ree agency is like +uantum mechanics. If you dont find it deeply disturbing, you dont understand it.
#
&2agarin,( I said.
&-h yes,( he said. &These one I remember. 5ut how do you know the other
ones/(
&I like pu$$les.(
&Why is this/( he asked.
&Well, I guess I like words, and figuring things out, and I like the grid,( I said.
&-h yes. 6ou have alluded to this before,( he said, looking up for the first time.
6ou like the checkerboard, yes/(
&3ike, I dont know, but it reminds me of things,( I said.
&3ike what/ 6ou like the lemonade/(
&6eah, sure. Its great.( It was good.
&.o the reminding,( he said.
&6eah I have this thing. -r I used to have this thing. Ive lost track of it over the
last few years,( I said.
6es/(
&6eah, well, it seemed to me that if you do he same thing over and over,
thousands of times, you get good at it. 2ood enough that you can do it e%actly the same
way over and over.(
&7Si/( he asked.
&6eah, so if you get to the point that youre doing the e%act same thing over and
over you might notice variations where there shouldnt be any.(
&6es/(
&.o you set up the pool balls8*ust two, to reduce the randomness of that
particular little cosmos8and if you shoot the same shot every time it ought to come out
the same every time, or pretty close, but it doesnt. There are variations, some so tiny as
to be hard to observe, but some that are more8significant. A long rail shot bounces
back, even though youve sunk the same shot on the same table a hundred times.(
&.ame stick/(
&.ame cue/ 6eah same cue stick.(
&And this has something to do with a grid/ 6our checkerboard/( he asked.
4
&.ure. To me, anyway. I think of the world as being laid out on a grid like a
geometry problem only its not clear where the x and a y a%es are. 9aybe off over the
hori$on somewhere, but not much use to us here and now. "ere and now its *ust a
checkerboard grid. And it runs off to infinity, and the s+uares are almost infinitely small.(
&(Almost/( he asked.
&Well, I can see them.( "e nodded as though my response made sense, which it
didnt. I keep to keep this kind of analogy to myself to avoid the kind of irritating
assumptions you encounter when youre honest about whats on your mind. Thomas
rattled the ice in his glass. I retrieved the gin bottle from the free$er. "e smiled and
poured himself what looked like about a pint of gin, although the ice and s+uee$ed!out
limes would have displaced some. "e looked at me e%pectantly so after I replaced the
Tan+ueray in the free$er so I handed him the Tupperware container of lime wedges, at
which he smiled, and then the tonic water bottle, which again seemed to surprise him. "e
nevertheless poured a dollop of tonic into his drink and handed the bottle back to me.
0onversation continued while all this took place.
&Si,( he said. &5ut the s+uares, they are small,( he said.
&:ight. And for the most part, the s+uares are re!black, red!black all the way. 5ut
maybe theres another pattern that started somewhere else and its mapper8(
&What is this mapper/( Thomas gently interrupted, looking up from his drink.
&The mapper is the person who has filled in the s+uares.(
&T; <=> ?;@>A> BCDE; EF=@ G>F ABH/
I
( he asked.
&This is a map. The whole grid, the checkerboard, is the map.(
&Ah.(
&.i. .o the map is on this infinite plane marked with a grid that creates tiny little
s+uares stretching off to the hori$on. And somebody8a mapper8has filled in the
s+uares. In the part of the grid I imagined first, all of the s+uares were red and black, in a
perfect checkerboard pattern. .ort of.
J
( Thomas was sipping his drink and looking ad me
worriedly. I decided to forge ahead. &5ut then the small irregularities I noticed, the one
in three hundred shots that didnt behave the way they ought to, I began to sense them as
disruptions in the checkerboard. Its like there was a mapper over here who was filling in
one checkerboard, and a mapper over there who was filling another. Two guys, filling in
s+uares, following their own rules. They were *ust filling in black s+uares, no other
I
&What in the "ell are you talking about,( more or less, but one of the words he used is not found in the
5ible. -r in Aristotle, for that matter.
J
3ike so. -r sort of like so. "enry never really imagined a strict redKblack checkerboard, or not for long.
"e saw variations and oddities as soon as he recogni$ed a pattern. 5ut either way, you know what a simple
redKblack checkerboard looks like, it looks *ust like the checkerboard you had when you were a kid, so lets
look at this insteadL
I
agenda, but it turns out they were out of sync. .o when their checkerboards met they
didnt mesh. They conflicted.
M
There are walls and lines where they clash. 6ou cant
miss it. .ingularities. -ddities.(
&And of course you could not leave this alone. 6ou continued this repressive
analogy further,( said Thomas.
&Why do you say that/( I asked.
&3ike a dog returneth to8oh, never mind( he said.
&I know that verse. Thats really rude,( I said.
&Si. Please forgive me. And perhaps some more beverage,( he said. I rose and
handed him the Tan+ueray bottle, the ice bycket from the free$er, the tonic bottle, and the
lime wedges, then replaced then one by one as he handed them back. I continued. "e
was a good listener and was paying attention.
&.o how the analogy continued was not only did checkerboards in identical colors
sometimes clash when the mappers werent coordinated, or the starting points clashed,
Its a simple grid with no conflicts, meaning no patterns that clash with each other. It follows a few applied
rules, like &color a s+uare green after every ten reds unless that puts it close to another non!red, non!black
s+uare,( etc. :ules that take no intelligence to apply. The mapper applied those rules pretty strictly but
then chose not to fill the grid in completely after the point at which there were there were not enough empty
NwhiteO s+uares to complete a cycle Nfill in five s+uares on this side, then fill in five s+uares on that side,
etc.O These rules are, of course, arbitrary gibberish8why pick one rule over another/8but they were
nevertheless strictly applied. No matter how precisely the rules were applied you could never deduce them
from looking at this one checkerboard. It *ust cant be done. 6oud need to look at several, maybe do$ens,
that were mapped with the same rules, then you might be able to discern a statistical pattern. Then you
could publish a paper, if this grid were at all important, which its not, so you couldn.t.
M
This is a NmostlyO black and white checkerboard with two different grids and that are out of phase. The
conflict between the two grids marks itself as a NmostlyO black lineL
Theres also a small conflict in the upper left corner thats caused by the mapping rules, but it reveals itself
in the same wayL a solid black space. A conflict will also mark itself if you map the conflict in more than
one color, but its harder to see. .ee footnote P. It would still be amenable to statistical analysis.
J
which creates this distinctive wall!like pattern in the grid, but sometimes you run into a
mapper that uses different colors.(
&What happens then/( he asked.
&It looks maybe a little chaotic,
Q
( I said, &but it isnt. It works out to the same
map, *ust a little more colorful. Adding more variables doesnt necessarily make it more
complicated, *ust more varied. 9athematically, its the same.(
&"ow so/( he asked, then began sniffing, as though his nose had *ust received an
urgent communi+uR from the stove that something needed attention.
&If a black and empty checkerboard8(
&Que/( Thomas interrupted.
&)nglish.(
&What/(
&When several half filled patterns, meaning half of the s+uares are unfilled,
collide, the weirdness walls itselfoff.
S
5ut whena bunch of half filled patterns collide,
some in synch, some out of synch, some partially in synch,
P
it gets *umbled, but you can
Q
.tart with five points Nthe purple onesO randomly distributed, then allow them to propagate their won
grids, in this case black, blue, green, red, and orange, like soL
The result is a *umble, but if you had enough e%amples and counted carefully enough you could deduce the
rules as accurately as you can with the checkerboard in footnote J. Note that because the unfilled NwhiteO
s+uares are evenly distributed, the conflict is easy to see and walls itself off, so that the five different
checkerboards cause trouble in easily observable, and limited, ways.
S
This is a &fully filled( checkerboard, with two conflicting redKblack patternsL
The patterns are there, but theyre harder to discern. They would show up *ust as clearly on statistical
analysis even though theyre harder to see,.
P
If you have two redKblack checkerboard out of phase, the conflicts map, but theyre not as clearly &walled
off( to visual inspection as two Nor any other numberO of black Nor any other colorOKunfilled checkerboards
that are out of phaseL .ee footnote T.
M
still see the conflict lines. And if its several different colors, and several different out!of!
phase areas, wall!off is colorful but not any more informative.(
&Where then the chaos to which you alluded/( he asked, taking a satisfied
swallow of his drink.
&If one of them is black and unfilled, or any color and unfilled, half of the pattern
from the one thats all filled in can continue to spread, although the first color gets walled
off. The second color spreads until it encounters an area of the grid that is all filled in.
T
(
&What if a yellow grid encounters a red grid/ 0an not the red march over the
yellow to make the orange/(
&No, occupied s+uares stay occupied. Its only the blank ones that get written
over. .o far.(
&6ou spoke of this matri% in the passed tense,( he said.
&9atri%/(
&Si. Why did you speak of it in the passed tense/(
&I guess its a kind of matri%, but I dont think of it as having that kind of
significance.(
&1o not become distracted. Why do you speak of this , checkerboard in the
passed tense/(
&Are you saying passed/( I asked.
T
There are several different colors here but only one way they can be out of phaseL
"ere some of the &in phase( areas bleed across each other8to a limited e%tent green has &escaped( its own
area, but particularly blue has wandered all across the space on the left already &occupied( by other colors
because in this illustration the phases have *umbled themselves up and so statistically, this one would be
much mpre difficult to analy$e. 6ou can either have regular empty spaces Nsee footnote MO or no empty
spaces at all Nsee footnote SO and the statistics are pretty easy to resolve, but if you have both, theyre not
amenable to statistical analysis, *ust desription. 'or the illustrations in footnotes I, J, and M, you could
describe the distribution with a formula. 'or this one, in footnote T, all you could do is count them. Any
formula or e+uation that described the numbers would be an accident, happenstance, and would not preduct
the distribution of s+uares in the ne%t checkerboard that followed the e%act same rules. 9ath is a handy tool
in describing things, but *ust alike all languages it has its limitations.
Q
&3et us not get distracted,( he said, impatiently.
&6es. Past tense. I dont see it so much any more. When you start with +uantum
you look at smaller and smaller details. And the checkerboard was already pretty tiny
when I started. To look at smaller and finer fractions of something that was already so
small as to be really hard to notice made the entire e%ercise kind of , evaporate. It stops
having what , ephemeral meaning it had to start with. I tend to think by analogy, but
finding any kind of sense there seemed impossible. .o I stopped thinking about it.
Unless I see a checkerboard. -r am bored in class and start to doodle.( "e stared at his
drink for a few seconds.
&)phemeral,( he said, after a pause.
&6ou like that word/(
&I dont understand impossible. That the smallness makes it impossible. Not to a
person as cra$y as you,( he said.
&Well, if its so small that you can barely see it, then you take each tiny s+uare and
cut it into hundreds of tineier s+uares, the whole thing becomes impossible to see,( I said.
&)ven if you could see it, it wouldnt be possible to make sense of it.(
&No. 6ou miss the pointe. 6ou see impossible things every day.(
&I dont know about that,( I said, doubtfully.
&Si,( you do.
&3ike what/(
&In the bar at the bowling alley,( he said.
&Which one/(
&The one where we met,( he said.
&That was the "i%son 3anes,( I said. &6ou were with a hard!drinker named,
what/ 3incoln/(
&'ord. I do not think of 'ord as a what you say Vhard drinker,( he said.
&6ou wouldnt.(
&And once again we are straying from the topic of our attention,( he said, rising
to refresh his drink and pausing on the way to the refrigerator to look into the back yard.
&A scrub *ay,( he said, pointing at a pine tree. &And a female Annas hummingbird,( he
S
said, turning from the window towards the refrigerator. I looked for the birds but my
eyes werent nearly as good as Thomas. I could see what was probably the *ay.
&.o the topic was e%otic birds/( I asked.
&De ninguin nodo. These birds are not the e%otic,( he said. &We were
discussing impossible things.(
&I thought we were talking about a priest, a drunk, and a gambler who meet in a
bar,( I said. &.tarts like a bad *oke.(
&Si. These things are the same. The gambler named Tommy said something
impossible. In #TS4.(
&Tommy/ "es *ust a dick. "es not a magician.(
&"e was giving you advice about New -rleans, one of my favorite cities.(
&6eah/ What did he say about New -rleans that was impossible/(
&"e advised you to look for what he called the W.:. )wing types. Whom he said
thought they were invincible.( This sounded vaguely familiar.
&.o/(
&6ou did not know who this W.:. )wing was and asked and Tommy informed
you that he was a character on a television show called Dallas.(
&-kay,( I said, e%pecting him to go on, but he sat down, smiling smugly to
himself, and placed his new king!si%ed drink on the damp coaster at his place at the
kitchen table. &.o what/( I asked, confused.
&That is it.(
&Tommy talking about Dallas is the impossible thing/(
&-ne of many, many, but si, it was impossible.(
&It was a TX show.(
&Si. A television series that debuted in #TSP.( 2ack. That conversation with
Tommy would have been in #TS4. "mmm. 0ould he be right/
&6oure sure about this/( I asked.
&Si.( I thought for a minute.
P
&-kay. 3ets assume for the moment that you have your facts right. And if so,
Ill admit that its a little weird. 5ut that was Tommy. And Tommy was weird.(
&6ou say, Vweird/( he asked.
Well, I didnt like him, anyway.
&5ut thats *ust one, slightly hard to e%plain thing,( I said. &We *ust dont know
what the underlying reality of the situation was. 9aybe there was one.(
&Si. Perhaps. And what do you believe that to be/( he asked.
&I believe this is *ust one isolated instance in a long life8(
&3ong,( he said, sipping his gin.
&8in a medium!length life that has seen lots more , normalcy than
irregularity.(
&And is my guess correct that you decided to attend the university to attempt to
find out what causes these irregularities in the matri%/(
&Again with the matri%,( I answered.
&Si!(
&.i. 9ore or less.(
&And that you are unhappy with the +uantum because it gives you a small look
into these irregularities through the windows of the eigenfinction
#Y
and probability but
does not allow you to e%plain these/(
&Wait a minute8( I started, but stopped.
&Si/(
&Ummm. 9aybe. 6oure not far off, anyway. -f something. I dont like it
that +uantum doesnt try to describe reality. Its like a grammar with no vocabulary. 5ut
back to the point. Why a matri%/(
&Ah. That is the , most simple part. The simple way to do the +uantum math
was in a matri%. "eisenberg found this. It is the most logical way. Physics rules , rise
up out of a +uantum matri% like a pond from a spring, but the 1anish did not follow this
path. -r perhaps the 2ermans. In this it is hard to say.(
#Y
)igenfunction comes up in +uantum theory a lot.
T
&Why not/( I asked.
&.chrZdinger could not do the math.(
&What/ Wait. There was math that was over .chrZdingers head/(
&Si. Nobody could do it. The matri% math, I mean. )%cept 1irac. And maybe
5orn. And "eisenberg, of course, who found it. 5ut everyone else liked the picture of the
electrons going around in little shells and did not want to think of this peculiar new
matri%,( he said. "e looked forlornly at his drink in front of him then slowly drained the
last swallow.
&What is the matri%/( I asked.
&"eisenberg confined himself to what he knew and what others knew rather
than what everyone believed.(
&-kay,( I said, e%pecting him to continue, but he didnt right away. "e rattled
the ice in his glass and scowled at it briefly but did not yet get up for a refill. &.o/( I
asked.
&We do not know what paths electrons take as they , orbit around the
nucleus,( he began.
&We dont/(
&1o you know what shape electron shells have/( he asked.
&I think so,( I said.
&And how do you know these/( "e got up to refill his glass, looking maybe a
little unsteady.
&I learned them in high school,( I said.
&And have you seen any e%perimental datum that confirms this idea that is in
your head/
&Well, no,( I admitted. "e didnt add any ice, but added some fro$en gin, less
than last time and he actually added some tonic water, then lumbered back to his seat.
&And do you ever heard of any such datums/( he asked, when he was seated.
&1ata,( I said. &And I guess not. Im not sure where they came from. Its *ust
always kind of assumed.( The shape of the electron shells, I meant.
#Y
&Si. 6ou believe this because others told you it was so. And they deduced them
from the behavior of other ob*ects. 5ut in actualness all we "now is that these electrons,
or whatever these tiny things are, emit certain fre+uencies of light when they change from
one state, or one shell, to another, si/(
&That I know about,( I said. When electrons shift from a high energy shell to a
lower energy shell they flash a tiny bit of light when they change, and the spectrum is
always the same for each kind of shift. I dont know how to do it, but somebody in the
thirties sat down and figured out about these electron shells from all those spectral lines.(
"e paused to take a swallow of his frink. Wandering around in the back of my mind was
that he was pretty informed about particle physics for a cra$y old priest.
&Si. And where did you say you learned of the shapes of the electron shells/(
he asked, looking pleased with himself for some reason.
&In 9r. Whites high school chemistry class,( I said.
&And you still believe them to be real/(
&Well, I did until *ust now. I guess now that you mention it, what Ive learned
about +uantum makes me kind of wonder why it is its taught that way. .o,definite.(
&Si. 5ut it is a useful thing to think about, no/ The shells/(
&-h, yeah. It helps me visuali$e kinds of things. Why atoms of elements
combine to form things.(
&Si. 5ut 1r. "eisenbergs large insight was that the electrons we imagine are
not real. We do not see the electrons. We do not see their little shells. All we see is the
light that flashes out when the little electrons shift states or shells or the what!have!you.
"e decided that the physical theory should , be concernRd only with things he could
observe. "e decided to leave the little shells behind and to arrange his numbers, what you
can probably call values, according to what he knew in certain.(
&What!have!you/(
&Si. And once he stopped thinking of the electrons in their tiny shells
"eisenberg started the putting down of all information he knew about the electrons into
orderly charts and reali$ed that these charts of values had uni+ue properties. They could
be manipulated and calculated but only in particular ways.(
&Uni+ue/(
&Si. They do not commute.(
##
&-dd.(
&Si. .o when he brought these charts back from "eigolannd8(
&Whats that/(
&8a rock. To 2Zttingen8( I didnt ask &8they revealed a deep understanding
of the math of the universe to 5orn and 1irac and they
##
published a paper that showed
the cosmos down to its essentials. #verything we know, or knew then, at least about
physics could be ,pulled , drawn from these charts. This matri%.(
&-kay,( I said.
&"eisenberg worked back from what he knew. "e plotted the initial states of all
of the , particles and then the end states of the particles and the energy that was emitted
because of the spectrograph when they shifted orbit or shell or , whatever you call it in
the present day and he prepared e+uations that e%plained , expressed how these
transitions took place.(
&And the math holds up/(
&$Si% It e%plains everything.(
&Why dont they teach it to us/(
&I told you. .chrZdinger did not like it. No one did. They liked the electrons in
clouds and shells and did not like to think of something so abstract as a matri% that had no
relation to reality. It challenged their beliefs. And their math. .chrZdinger came up with a
different math that was based on calculus and the wave state and everyone knew about
waves.(
&.o since theres a waveKparticle duality, is .chrZdingers math based on half of
what we know/(
&"alf of what they could observe, si. 5ut everyone could do the math.(
&.o the matri% was better.(
&Si.(
&And you think my checkerboard is a version of "eisenbergs matri%.(
&6ou oversimplify,( he said.
&If I want to learn about this what do I read/(
##
'ather Thomas omits the contributions of Pascual Wordan.
#4
&[ber +uantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer
5e$ehungen,( he said.
&)nglish,( I said.
&This I cannot say. Perhaps ask the librarian for the three!man paper.(
&.o youre telling me there is math behind my checkerboard. -r could be. 9ath
that accounts for the way it e%presses normal states and walls off irregularities.(
&Not e%actly, but si.(
&"ow not e%actly/( I asked.
&The sum of all values in a matri% is generally $ero. 6ou think the matri% is out
of balance.(
&I have a hard time believing that theres any kind of sense to any of this. 9y
own gibberish least of all.(
&Si.(
&Why wasnt I told/( "e shrugged and finished his drink. I could hear the front
door slam shut in that loud kind of way that indicated that 0andide was home. I could
hear his backpack hit the floor with a loud crash wheb he threw it down the hallway
towards his bedroom after he walked through the door, then his heel!first tread as he
crossed the living room.
&6o,( he said, entering the kitchen with a handful of :eeces peanut butter cup
minis. There was a bowl of them near the front door left over from "alloween. "e
dropped then on the kitchen table then crossed to the refrigerator, grabbed a 9iller,
#4
and
sat down.
&6o,( he said again, as though e%pecting an answer.
&Were discussing +uantum mechanics,( I said.
&Which part/( 0andide asked, ripping open and peeling the paper from a peanut
butter cup. "e ate it in a swallow then took a gulp of his beer.
&9atri% mechanics,( I said.
&Never heard of it,( he said, taking another pull off his beer. &Whats for
dinner, old man/( he asked, throwing another peanut butter cup into his mouth.
#4
9iller "igh 3ife. The champagne of bottled beer. Its not advertised that way so much any more.
#I
&Peshavari bhara mirch.(
&Whats that/(
&.tuffed peppers. Also dal, and spinach.(
&And that flat bread/( he asked, hopefully.
&Si. Nan.(
&.ounds good. When/(
&When I have finished my beverage and "enry has told me something
important.(
&2ood luck with that,( said 0andide, standing and tossing his empty beer bottle
across the room towards the trash can with a high arc in a truly frightening way, but it
landed safely in the garbage with a plop. If he was proud of his marksmanship he didnt
show it. "e grabbed another beer from the refrigerator on the way out. &Im going to
study,( he said, scooping up the remaining :eeces.
&The girl is *oining us for dinner or no/( Thomas asked.
&No, damn it all. They have some kind of chorus deal that theyre practicing for
0hristmas. -r is it Thanksgiving/ .ome high school holiday deal that I dont have to go
to. .ucks she cant come over. .ee ya.( "e turned to go, swigging his beer, thenn turned
back to ask Thomas a +uestion.
&Are we ever going to have anything e%cept Indian food, old man/ I mean, its
good and Im not complaining, but in+uiring minds want to know.(
&We can, si. I can pick up the provisions for 9e%ican food when "enry and I
go to the grocers ne%t.(
&0ool. Thanks. .ounds good,( he said, grabbing another beer as he left.
Thomas drink was almost empty. "e looked at it with concern.
&.o youre sure Tommy talked about Dallas in #TS4/( I asked.
&$Si% And that was the important thing, gracias, it had slipped the mind that we
had discussed this before so we do not have something important to talk about.(
&Im still not sure Tommy had anything important to say.(
#J
&.ometimes it is not important what was said or how it happened, sometimes it
is only important that it happened at all.(
&I dunno. Tommys pretty useless. "e would con his own mother if he could
get out the door before she figured it out.(
&An other e%ample, then,( said Thomas.
&.earch me,( I said.
&No, thank you,( he said, and looked at his glass again, clearly considering yet
another refill. &I have another e%ample.(
&.hoot,( I said.
&.hoot/(
&2o ahead,( I said.
&0ertainly. 5eatri$ said that you and she were walking home from the
restaurant one night in the dark,( he said.
&We did that many times.(
&The way she described it this night you were dangerously close to each other,(
he said.
&1angerous, I dont know.(
&And as you had some earnest conversation a $ebra with red eyes appeared out
of the nowhere and trotted away.(
&6eah. It did. Now that was weird,( I said.
&And you did not make en+uiries/ 6ou did not chase the $ebra/( he asked.
&Well, no.(
&And why was this/(
&Well, partly it was because 5eatri$ was so matter of fact about it,( I said. &It
was almost like it hadnt happened, even though she acknowledged that it did. .he said I
shouldnt allow myself to get distracted. .he may have been +uoting you, now that I
think of it.(
#M
&.he sometimes does. And you did not make in+uiries about this $ebra/( he
asked.
&Well, no, I mean, partly because what 5eatri$ was talking about was really
important to her, too. And she seemed to want me to ignore it.(
&And because 5eatri$ desired to ignore a red!eyed $ebra trotting through the
campus you were re+uired to ignore it, too/(
&9aybe. 5ut also at least somebody else saw it that time. 2enerally when
$ebras show up nobody else is around to notice,( I said.
&6ou see $ebras fre+uently/(
&Well, not always $ebras, but some strange things.(
&'re+uently/( he asked.
&'rom time to time.(
&Now that is important. And please to set the table. Also to give me *ust the
tiniest bit of gin.(
#Q