I took two rooms. I undressed Matt, washed his face and put him on the bed. I left a note in his hand saying "We are next door." I took his togs, which reeked of piss, gasoline, and fear, bubble bathed them, and hung them out.

It was a while before I could take care of the imbecile, though I was well used to washing and dressing her by now. I thought I shouldn't call her an imbecile anymore – that's just what I used to think when I would see her staring at a blank wall. But she was the reason we'd made money; she spoke about beautiful things; she didn't just understand numbers, she saw them when she closed her eyes. It was just that our miserable lives, devoid of the pureness of numbers, had no meaning for her. That's why she disconnected.

After she was washed and dressed, we fell asleep on the bed; she held me tight like a child would. I thought about her life: she must have grown up all alone, her mind casting her out from society. To be a child and not be able to take refuge in your parents' warmth, to be constantly exposed to the coldness of life – wouldn't that drive anyone nuts? I held her, wondering, and hoped she wouldn't lose her ability to travel amongst numbers.

Many times during the night we were woken by the copulative rhythms of our neighbors from the other side of the wall. She looked at me with her eyes wide open and rhythmically whispered her numbers. She was travelling along an immense coast of natural numbers, overrun by a fractal foam of decimals, complexes, irrationals and transcendentals.

But her gaze wasn't empty. It connected with me, and I was there with her in an infinite ocean of numbers.