Daniel walked the streets for days. Time was nonexistent to him. He knew not that the light changed to dark or the dark moved into light. He did not eat; his mind was so far removed from the realm of physicality that his brain wasn't aware of his stomach. He walked, he sat, he flickered between wake and sleep . . . where he did all these things, he didn't know. His thoughts and, therefore, his present existence were consumed with one purpose: to remember whatever it was Adrian had told him he'd forgotten. His skull housed a hazed mass of muddled nothingness—a kernel of a treasure chest, sealed and concealed from his shallow level of understanding. The calm waters within him masked his troubled depths; on which bottomless abyssal plain would he discover the secret nature of himself? It was there, somewhere, a tiny pearl housed in an inscrutable oyster, buried deep within. Just as the hunter knows his prey lurks in the forest though it evades his sight, so Daniel was cognizant of the fact that this knowledge lay within himself. This existence of his, going to class, painting, working—how long had it gone on? He had never questioned its duration, its purpose, or its engendering. But Adrian had made it clear to him that it was a façade, and Daniel, now that he'd been told, felt it to be true though he had never thought of it before. But what was it hiding? And where had it come from?

Moments that lasted days he searched within himself for any answer which might aid him in recollecting, but he had become so close to who he was, now, that he could not determine how to break from it. Anger filled him during this time, though he'd not known the sentiment prior; he felt it toward himself for withholding secrets vital to his makeup.

He had not seen Adrian since they'd sat across one another in the park. Where the man had gone, he could not guess, and it mattered little, because Daniel understood somehow that Adrian would not be back until he had a reason to be. That reason was, of course, Daniel's remembrance. What had been before his color portraits? His art classes? His waking up and studying the ceiling of his bedroom each morning from the balding mattress on the floor? What had been before it? Dreams . . . dreams whose smoky tendrils he could no longer grasp. This notion he pondered forever, for as much time as he spent wandering. He sought the subjects of his dreams until his head ached with strain; he pulled his sight away from the inside of his skull and out of itself until his forehead tore with the exertion and his breath nearly halted in his lungs. Yet he could not discover what he wished. Before he awoke, there had been dreams. This was all he knew for certain by the time he had done with his isolated drifting. It was little to alleviate his pain.

Emerging as if from out of days of darkness, Daniel waked to ascertain that he was in his apartment. This disconcerted him; at first, he did not realize it was his own living quarters. He saw signs of life . . . a cup half-full of some clear liquid, an old shirt crumpled on the floor, tubes of paint squeezed out onto a slab of cardboard, brushes scattered in a corner of the room. The tall windows streamed with light onto the hardwood floors, splaying huge rectangles of quartered gold. Daniel sat in the sunlight, and he at any moment expected to hear voices, see someone else prance into the room—for he did not recognize this place. It was moments before he understood it to be his own apartment, but he little understood how he'd gotten there. Had he been here all along? Had he wandered home from the park and been lost in thought here, in this room, for all that time? He couldn't tell. He did know, however, that his stomach was painfully re-aware of its presence; he had no idea when he'd last eaten. Knowing without looking that there was no food in his cabinets, Daniel took his keys and left the apartment, making sure only when he got to the lower level door that he had shoes on his feet and clothes on his body.

The late afternoon was warm. So warm that he needed no jacket to cover his sleeveless arms. Dreams--that was all he knew. He had to remember his dreams. Whatever else was currently in his life didn't matter, Adrian had said, but this much did, because it might give him some clue as to what had preceded his present state of being.

A diner was about a block from his apartment. He'd been there several times (Daniel rarely, if ever, brought food back to his apartment). He ate sparingly, but he knew the place for its proximity and economical prices. Checking his pockets, he found no money in them, but that didn't matter. The diner was small and shoddy, but it would do. Taking a seat on a barstool, Daniel asked that the waitress bring him a coffee and two fried eggs. This was what would give him the little energy he needed to keep going. Hunger was only an occasional inconvenience.

As he sipped his coffee, Daniel pushed his brain further inward again in attempt to decipher his past dreams, but it was futile, not just because he could not remember but also because a noise on his left suddenly began to distract him.

"Hey, I think I know you," it was saying mildly, without enthusiasm or persistence.

Daniel's eggs were plopped onto a plate in front of him. His coffee was poured by some indistinctive waitress. He listened to the gurgling sound the liquid created as it moved from the pot, through the air, into the mug—took note of the steam curlicues emanating above the porcelain rim—pondered the colors layered within smoke wisps: could he paint such ephemeral depth? And then he realized . . . someone had been speaking to him. The sound vacuum between his ears dissolved as he awoke from empty thought for the second time that day. To his left sat a scruffy-looking man in a corduroy jacket. He was not looking at Daniel but was instead hunched over a huge plate of fries, wolfing down a burger.

"I apologize," Daniel quietly remarked. "Were you speaking to me?"

The man next to him was clearly startled. He made a motion as if he had difficulty swallowing and hurriedly dropped his burger onto the plate. Wiping his hands on the napkin on his lap, he good-naturedly responded, "Oh! Yeah, yeah. I thought you were ignoring me."

"No." Daniel smiled placidly. "My thoughts were clouded."

"I know how you feel, man. My head is like that practically every day. What's on your mind? Want to talk it out with someone?"

"Talk it out?" Daniel reiterated the words perplexedly.

"Yeah, you know. Get it off your chest."

Daniel's gaze crossed the man's smiling face, his bright eyes, his shining ruddy cheeks, his bristled chin. There was something so naturally congenial in his demeanor that Daniel was at ease (though he hadn't known he'd not been until just then). Speech came naturally to him, suddenly. "I'm trying to remember something I seem to have forgotten."

The man poked at his burger for a moment, then picked it up and took a bite, seemingly mulling over what had been said. "A bit of juice tricked out of his mouth, making its way between the hairs on his chin like a pinball. Daniel turned away from him, stared at the counter, ate a bit of his eggs. He felt neither lighter nor heavier for speaking. When he'd swallowed his bite, the man put down his burger again, ate a fry, and replied, "I feel your pain. I've had many a night when I can't remember what I've said. I can usually remember what I've done—or more like what I haven't done (which is good to know; if you can't remember the details of a night, you at least want to know you didn't do something huge like murder someone or sleep with your girlfriend's friend or something). But I usually can't remember things I've said. You know, because I've been drinking a little too much." At the word "little," the man held up his hand and indicated "a little bit" with his thumb and index finger, smiling as if sharing a personal joke. "So I know I've talked to people, but I can't really remember what about. It's like, I'll spend five hours in a bar, talking it up with all sorts of people, and the next morning, I can't remember a single word of what I've said." He shrugged, picked a few sesame seeds off his bun and took a large drink of a coke at the side of his plate. It was a bit like he was having a conversation with himself. "Eh, not that it really matters too much. I'm sure nobody else remembers what I've said, either! Just matters that you enjoy yourself, right?"

"That does seem to happen to me, sometimes, too," Daniel admitted.

"You drink too much, too?"

Daniel lowered his brow in thought. "No . . . no. I don't think so."

The other man studied him, but Daniel didn't notice the curiosity in his eyes. "Well hey. I'm Al." He held out his hand. Daniel blinked a little in surprise but accepted it, smiling wanly. "I'm assuming you don't remember this either, but I met you a little while ago, leaving that bar on Burwin. I think you work there."

"Yes, I do, sometimes."

"Right. Well . . ." He widened his eyes and paused, then continued; conversation came easily for him. "You really do seem like an interesting guy, you know. Like there's always something on your mind. I mean, in just the few times I've seen you, it's like . . . like you—you're—oh, what's the word? It means, like, distant or something. . . aloof! Aloof. That's it. Like there's just a lot going on up here." He indicated his head. "What are you thinking about all the time?"

Holding his coffee in his hands as if trying to keep them warm, Daniel attempted to form words in his mind. He'd never been asked such a question. Never been called to relate his thought processes. "I don't really know," he responded after a moment.

"Nah, I bet you do, but it's some deep stuff. Like, quantum physics or something. You know, I do a lot of reading, and I know characters like you—they brood, you know? Sit and think too much, I mean, really think. They have all these psychological mind awakenings, think all this stuff nobody else would ever come up with (or wouldn't admit to if they did). That's what you remind me of. A character in a book. You're just, like . . . not here, somehow. You're somewhere else. In the clouds. Or in a dream."

"Dream?"

"Yeah. It's like you're walking around or sitting here having a dream. Whenever I've seen you at that bar—and believe me, it's been a lot, lately—" (he huffed and rolled his eyes as he said this) "--I've just kind of been noticing that. Maybe you need to have a drink once in a while—might loosen you up. But I guess you can't drink at the bar while you're working, huh? What if sometime you come out afterward with me? We can go to a four o'clock or something, get you a drink. Cause I bet you need one sometimes after standing around all night."

Daniel had stopped listening to Al. He had begun, instead, to speculate on the words his counter-mate had spoken before going on about grabbing a drink. You're somewhere else, he'd said. In a dream. Somewhere else. Somehow, these words held significance. He felt them resonate somewhere deep within his skull, in the very core of his chest. Before what he could remember, he had been somewhere else. This was important, and it was true. He knew it as surely as he knew the nature of color. What that place had been, however, was as far from him as was the reconstruction of his prior existence. But he felt a strong desire to return to his apartment.

He made a movement as if to get up. Al caught the motion and quickly added, "You don't have to. Just an offer. Everybody needs someone to talk to, once in a while, and you look as if you've gone a long while without a good conversation. Not saying I can help you much, but—"

"No," Daniel blurted. He turned to the man next to him as he rose from his bar stool. "You've helped me very much. Thank you." With a sharp nod of his head, he said farewell.

Al watched him shuffle out the door in obvious fluster and distraction. Then, he glanced at the half-eaten eggs and half-drunk cup of coffee still sitting on the bar next to his own sustenance and shook his head. When the waitress walked past and gave him a look of confusion, he told her, "His is on me." And that was that.