Adrian had left, but Daniel had known that when he was ready to find the man, he would be able to. And such was the case as he stood at the bottom of the high-rise in which he knew Adrian now resided. If it was strange that he knew without being told that Adrian was here, Daniel didn't know. The thought did not even cross his mind. He was ready to see Adrian, this was where Adrian was, and so he was here. He had done much thinking for the past two days, though his thought process had been turbulent and hardly logically chronological. This all had something to do with somewhere he had been before . . . before being here . . . before the awareness that he was in school and taking classes and painting and bartending. He had been somewhere before all of it; Adrian knew where that somewhere was, and Daniel guessed that because he could not remember it on his own, he would have to be reminded by the very person blaming him for a faulty memory. Adrian had left him alone for several days since their meeting in the park. Daniel had not seen or heard from him since that day, but he knew that Adrian expected him to locate him when he was ready for the next step.

Here was a real conundrum, however. This high-rise was enormous, and even if Adrian had a last name, Daniel didn't know it (the buzzers were listed by the last name of each apartment's occupant). He could not get in the building without somebody letting him in; once inside, he was sure he would be able to find his companion, but the question was how to get in. The only solution seemed to remain where he was and wait. He would wait for as long as was necessary.

Graduation had come and gone. Daniel had neglected to attend it, but that was because it had entirely slipped his mind. He had not attended classes for the last two months of school; subsequently, he should have doubted he had even passed his classes—but he hadn't even had the chance to doubt that he passed, because he hadn't even thought to think about them. Adrian's return had entirely consumed him, just as his art had always consumed him . . . at least, it had consumed him for as long as he could remember. It had not occurred to Daniel to inquire with anyone else as to what they knew of him. He had not sought to speak with any of his professors, with Molly or Brian at the bar, or with anyone with whom he had come into contact during the time he could remember being here. His search for understanding was an entirely narcissistic endeavor; he knew only that it involved himself, so it was within himself that he sought answers. He might have actually benefited by interviewing the various other human beings he'd known, but Daniel did not have the ability or even the knowledge that he lacked the ability to take in situational awareness. Other people existed only in his peripheral vision, and even then only when he came into direct contact with one of them. Adrian was different, though. Daniel knew this as an instinct—nothing more. Adrian was an entity unto himself, not just some other human being going about his daily life with no conception of a grand design or scheme beyond the ticking moments of earthly existence.

Daniel's own days and nights had begun to blur into a bizarre cocktail of illusions. When he slept, his dreams of guns and translucent haze had begun to gain a lucidity that metamorphosed into the moments he awoke and found himself back in the real world. Dreams, realness, madness—the edges separating such confections of the mind were no longer sharp, if they ever had been sharp to begin with. Even as he walked down the street or past his apartment or served drinks in a noisy bar or stood waiting outside a high-rise, he felt the cool metal of the gun against his palm, the smooth curve of the trigger against his finger. He sensed fault in the corners of his eyes, a mist that gathered from a place which he could no longer distinguish against the daylight. He heard within his mind voices, inaudible yet definite, speaking to him in tongues he knew he would be unable to decipher even if he had known what they were saying. This congealing of realities was in no way disturbing to him; it had crept upon him at a manageable pace, and it knew that he'd accept it for what it was without question or concern. It was all a part of what Adrian had come for. It was all so unavoidable as to indicate that avoidance was not even a definable word. It was all more natural than anything else a human could comprehend when placed under the restrictions of his own myopic mind.

His eyes looked down at his hands. His right hand in particular shimmered with the colors which he had found in his skin so many days before. How could he ever have doubted the rainbow hues housed in his flesh? They danced now, flashed across every inch of epidermis in his view. Purples, yellows, browns, blues, nuances which had no names. Even staring at his open palm, his five long, softly curling fingers, the wrinkles indicating his knuckles, the creases of lifelines in his skin, the too-long nails which needed to be cut—he felt a definite pressure against his index finger, his palm, his thumb. A pressure indicative of the weapon he knew he held yet could not see with the eyes he was using. It glistened in the back of his memory, the gun—like a dark diamond star blinking in a vast, empty outer space. Where it had come from, he did not know. What he must do with it, he did not know. And if he pulled the trigger now, would it go off? He dare not find out. The power was too great. It was the same power with which he interpreted the landscapes from his dream time. The colors he found there, the shadows he sensed there, the emptiness he did not yet know how to fill. The gun, Adrian, his art—they were the stuff of the same destructive forces.

"My God, it's you!"

Daniel heard the words but thought little of them until he was shaken from his reverie by the face of a young woman whose cheeks radiated heat and whose eyes expressed a sensation Daniel could not interpret. He did not answer the obvious inquiry in her features. But there was no need to; she began to talk of her own volition.

"I—I'm Dawn! Maybe you don't . . . I know you don't remember me." She cast her eyes down, clearly nervous. "It's all right, but you don't remember me. And . . . and why would you? I'm not so very memorable . . . am I? I've—I've come into the bar—the Burwin Tap. I've been there several times when you were working there. I've seen you . . . I mean, my friend talked to you . . . it's just that—oh! I'm too flustered to talk. You've just entirely thrown me off! Are you here to—I know I shouldn't presume . . . but are you here to see me?"

Trying to take in everything she was sputtering, Daniel opened his mouth and attempted to make answer, but she cut him off.

"Don't answer that! It doesn't matter . . . unless your answer is yes, of course . . ." She giggled nervously. "But don't answer! Not yet anyway. I don't think I could handle a response either way. Your name is Daniel isn't it?"

He nodded slowly, staring at the shine of sunlight streaking her hair, adding layers of color. He vaguely understood that she was holding a bag full of groceries and that she had stopped so abruptly that the loaf of bread on top of the bag had fallen out and plopped to the ground. Almost subconsciously, he leaned over to pick it up and put it back where it had come from.

She seemed to take the gesture as some sort of sign. "Thank you!" The sensationalized gratitude in her voice would have been laughable to anyone else. "I—I don't know what to do."

He stared at her. The lineaments of her face seemed to follow her features slower than normal, so that trails of numerous nose and chin and cheekbone contours were left fading in the wake of every head motion she made.

"Don't you talk?" she asked. Then she seemed to resent her question. "You don't have to answer that, either! You're too perfect to be forced to answer anything you don't want to. It's enough that you're here, standing next to me . . . it's like a miracle! Do you believe in destiny?"

Daniel hardly knew what to say or if she actually expected a response. He looked at the teeth lining her mouth, just visible in between her upper and lower lips. There were so many of them. "I'm sorry," was all he could muster. "I don't understand what you're asking me."

The woman gazed at him for a moment, their eyes meeting yet somehow hitting an invisible blockade keeping them from mutual recognition. "That's all right," she said quietly, as if fearful that anything louder would disturb the universe. Stepping to the right, she dumped her entire bag of groceries into a nearby trash can. "I don't need these that bad. Let me take you somewhere we can talk. Let me take you anywhere."

Knowing not what to do, Daniel allowed the woman to coax him away from the front of the apartment complex and down the sidewalk. She chatted on about something or other; it was along the same lines as everything else she'd been prattling, so he was not really sure what it was all about. Whoever she was, she was certainly full of conversation. Oddly enough, his reason for standing in front of the building left his mind altogether. While moments ago he had had the intense knowledge that he must speak with Adrian, he now felt entirely at a loss as to what his purpose was and instead found himself crossing the street and entering a small deli with this vaguely familiar woman. There were numerous people inside, as it was early afternoon and many were on their lunch breaks, but the two of them found a table by the window and had a seat. It was a booth with high benches over which no one could see, offering privacy for those seated inside it. They were in front of a window that looked out on the street; at first, Daniel was quite distracted by the way the shadows from the awning and plant boxes outside slanted through the pane. The woman was still talking; her voice was almost a sort of comforting background noise and seemed suddenly unnatural when it stopped after several moments of being seated.

Turning back toward his companion, Daniel took note of the flecks of blue, silver, and black comprising the formica tabletop. He looked for shapes and patterns in the bits of color. He saw the outlines of faces in the tiny flecks of dark and light and bent closer to get a better look.

"You're just like a little boy," commented the woman across from him. "I don't think you've heard a word I've been saying. It's like everything distracts you." Her face was lit with a soft smile of amusement, as soft as the waves of hair that fell across her shoulders.

"I'm sorry. What were you saying?"

"You're like a little boy," she laughed.

"A little boy?" Daniel was confused.

"Yes, a little boy. I didn't mean it as an insult; it was actually a bit of a . . . a compliment, I suppose. It's like, nothing affects you. Are you— " She lowered her voice and leaned in a little bit, "—are you a little off?" Immediately, she sat back and appeared flustered, which startled him somewhat. "Oh gosh! I didn't mean that to sound the way it came out! I mean—I mean I was just asking . . . oh, nevermind. It's just that you're so . . . so ADD. But I think that's a good thing. It means you have an active imagination. Everyone tells me I'm totally ADHD, or bipolar (they think I don't know they say that, but I know Eve has her suspicions). Anyway, they say that I'm just all over the place all the time. I take it as a good thing, because everything is so boring, so why shouldn't I make it more interesting? I mean, what's the point of being here if routine is all you've got?"

Daniel felt something strange on his face, some odd sensation in his cheeks and brow. He wasn't sure what was happening at first; he'd never paid much attention to anything his body did unless it concerned sustaining itself, so when he lifted his fingers to his cheeks and lips and found that he was almost smiling, he was perplexed.

"Yes, it's silly," the woman continued, taking note of what he was doing. "That's called a smile." She became wistful and sighed. "You have such a beautiful smile."

His hands relaxed; the fingers untensed; he placed them back on the table and felt satisfied. The woman stared at him, a look coming into her face that he had not even begun to decipher before she had reached out her own hands, across the table, and taken his in hers. At that moment, heat rushed through Daniel. Everything in the deli, everything on the street outside, everything in the world around the two of them seemed to expand, intensify, and light up—all sound, sight, color, sensation . . . Daniel could taste them on his tongue and knew their reverberations beneath his flesh. A life that before had not been a part of him coursed through him, up through every inch of his body—from his head through his neck to his chest and arms, back up his arms down through his chest to his hips to his thighs and his feet and all the way back up to the brain—like a pack of wild horses, bringing with them all the dust and afterthought and awakening that is at the very core of human existence. It would have been overwhelming, had not all of a sudden the world and the street and the scene inside the deli and the woman's face refocused his attention, and all of a sudden he was just Daniel, sitting across from a woman with curly brown hair, the gentle pressure and warmth of whose fingers and palms he could still feel atop his own. And she was talking to him, and he knew her.

"Are you all right?" she asked. "You look a little pale."

Something had left him in that moment, and yet something had entered him in its wake. He wanted to tell her so much, because now he could, but before he could do anything at all, a dark voice from above caused him to release her hands and turn his attention upward. All he'd felt when she'd clasped his hands in hers began to fade.

There stood Adrian. "You have to come with me." He was angry. Furious, even.

"Now?"

"You—you know each other?" the woman asked. Had Daniel looked at her face, he would have seen absolute shock, but he did not look.

"Now," Adrian reiterated.

Daniel began to get to his feet, but his companion was aggravated. "You can't take him!" she said. "I was talking with him! You—you can't just walk in here and—and take my . . .! Adrian, what's going on here?"

"Will you guys be ordering anything?" asked a waiter, approaching the trio good-naturedly but turning away with a look of uneasiness as the tall man shot him a dark glance.

Adrian then turned and gave the same look to the woman—a look that immediately shut her up. "He does not concern you."

His mind reeling from everything that had just happened and everything that was filtering out of him at that moment, Daniel absentmindedly rose and exited the deli with Adrian, leaving the woman behind him. This man whom he had never been able to refuse or deny, who had always had the last word, had held some power over him—a power whose roots he had been attempting to find in his past. Daniel had not even had the inclination to go against Adrian's wishes, but as he walked with the man across the street and back toward the very apartment building he had previously stood in front of, he became aware of a bizarre desire to disagree, beginning to glow and ferment in some corner of his brain that had been hitherto left untouched.

"You are a fool—an utter fool!" Adrian reprimanded, pulling Daniel aside and away from the pedestrians walking nearby.

Daniel was painfully confused; he felt as if his brain had been smashed with a heavy dosage of some powerful drug. He saw dark, igniting rage in this man's eyes, and he felt a bizarre pressure in his chest. His fingers tingled as if something rested in his hand, but when he moved them, he felt only empty space.

Adrian took note of Daniel's hand movement. He stepped backward, turned his head slowly left, then right, never breaking his lock on the other's eyes. "You are lost," the tall man almost inaudibly spoke. Daniel felt a terrible sinking sensation at the words. "You cannot remember, now." Adrian's tone was a malefic, impassioned whisper. His face contorted. He jabbed his finger upward toward the sky, toward the never-ending oceanic space above. "You leave me, now, alone. You leave me . . ." Water glittered on the lower rims of his eyes; his cheeks and mouth were terrible to look at; his tongue spat at Daniel's face as he seethed, "I will not go without you. You will see." And with that, Adrian was gone. Had rounded some corner past Daniel's range of vision, and he was left standing against a brick wall, uncertain of his location, unaware of what had happened in the last ten minutes and with a desperate pain in his stomach, as if he was about to vomit. Sensing a nearby trash can, Daniel stumbled to it, leaned over, and let his insides empty themselves of what little they held. He was left retching saliva and stomach bile for what seemed half an hour, but when he at last raised his head from the rim of the waste can, he thought he recognized that the people passing by were the same that had been passing by when he first entered the alley; had any time passed at all?

The knowledge that he was aware of the passing of time startled him; Daniel felt perplexed. The air in the alley in which he now stood seemed heavier, somehow—more visible than he remembered it being. A cognizance to which he had formerly been immune overwhelmed him, and it was all he could do to get his legs to move him back out onto the street. A terrible dread had settled into the core of his stomach. He could not even tell what it was he had lost, but he knew that it had been something momentous, and he inherently guessed that he would pay dearly if he wished to get it back.