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“Did you bring me here to kill me?” I ask.

“I did not.”

I feel so comfortable leaning against the old machine, like I’m sinking into it.

“But you let me believe it.”

“There was no other way.”

“No other way to what?”

“To get you here.”

“And why are we here?”

But he just shakes his head as he snakes his left hand up under the geisha mask and scratches.

I feel strange.

Like I’m simultaneously watching a movie and acting in it.

An irresistible drowsiness lowers onto my shoulders.

My head dips.

“Just let it take you,” he says.

But I don’t. I fight it, thinking how unsettlingly fast his tenor has changed. He’s like a different man, and the disconnect between who he is in this moment and the violence he showed just minutes ago should terrify me. I shouldn’t be this calm, but my body is humming too peacefully.

I feel intensely serene and deep and distant.

He says to me, almost like a confession, “It’s been a long road. I can’t quite believe I’m sitting here actually looking at you. Talking to you. I know you don’t understand, but there’s so much I want to ask.”

“About what?”

“What it’s like to be you.”

“What do you mean?”

He hesitates, then: “How do you feel about your place in the world, Jason?”

I say slowly, deliberately, “That’s an interesting question considering the night you’ve put me through.”

“Are you happy in your life?”

In the shadow of this moment, my life is achingly beautiful.

“I have an amazing family. A fulfilling job. We’re comfortable. n.o.body’s sick.”

My tongue feels thick. My words are beginning to sound slurred.

“But?”

I say, “My life is great. It’s just not exceptional. And there was a time when it could have been.”

“You killed your ambition, didn’t you?”

“It died of natural causes. Of neglect.”

“And do you know exactly how that happened? Was there a moment when—?”

“My son. I was twenty-seven years old, and Daniela and I had been together a few months. She told me she was pregnant. We were having fun, but it wasn’t love. Or maybe it was. I don’t know. We definitely weren’t looking to start a family.”

“But you did.”

“When you’re a scientist, your late twenties are so critical. If you don’t publish something big by thirty, they put you out to pasture.”

Maybe it’s just the drug, but it feels so good to be talking. An oasis of normal after two of the craziest hours I’ve ever lived. I know it isn’t true, but it feels like as long as we keep conversing, nothing bad can happen. As if the words protect me.

“Did you have something big in the works?” he asks.

Now I’m having to focus on making my eyes stay open.