The world turned suddenly distant and unreal. The criss-crossing bridge supports surrounding him became a sort of graph superimposed on the surface of the scenery beyond, making it all seem two-dimensional. The gleaming pinnacles of Manhattan in the rearview—the drear flatlands of Queens in the windshield—the alien reaches of Roosevelt Island at the windows—looked to him all at once like territories on a map of themselves, drawings on one of those old brown maps with sailing ships and whales in the sea-spaces and monsters in the vast unknown beyond the borders. Zach felt sick and started sweating. The cars ahead of him blurred. Their red bright taillights smeared themselves across his field of vision. His sudden sense of unreality—this image of New York as a map of itself—a hand-crafted picture of a place—a cartoon cityscape through which he was all too mysteriously passing—reminded him so much of his drive through Germany that he was only somewhat surprised, only somewhat nauseated, to see the executioner from his dream standing impossibly on one of the bridge’s low stone towers just up ahead.
