He scurries from the bed and dresses fitfully. Sometimes there is this urgency to get out. Get out, deconstruct this big sleepy being that dwells in bed, and get up. Eat, get out. What if he could get up at this point before the dream of Joy began so that he did not have to dream it for thirty-five years? What if the moment packed itself into a gunshot and died with the sound? Before he leaves the bedroom he glances at Eleanor, who sleeps on, the cumbersome shadow of himself that he has left behind, as if he must sever himself from her to form a new day. Today at least there is a reason for this urgency, and as he descends to the kitchen he wonders if his hair is acceptable this morning, if Alice will approve of the way he has gone thin and grey on top and of this funny round-shouldered thing that has happened to him. Well, she will not approve, but she may accept. She may smile, put her fingers through the grey strands, and say, “There is still a little black underneath, Jake.” It has been so long since he saw Alice; when he pictures her he always tries to put her in the context of a place and to imagine the objects that surround her, but in fact all he usually gets is the image of her stepping off a bus or train that has come from a place he has never visited, and then stepping back on it, to the place he will never visit, and her separation from him becomes so apparent that he would rather not picture her at all.
