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In Amsterdam, the black narrow houses along the canal looked like dollhouses tilting against the sky. I didn’t have to be
on drugs to find the city unreal. The dark rows of old-fashioned bicycles, the bare trees and solitary lampposts, the green
boats, the murky, glimmering water wherever we walked.

We smoked White Widow and ate space cake, sucking on sugar cubes and drinking black coffee. We entered a store called Dream
Lounge, and as Vincent looked at mushrooms beneath a glass case, I walked around the room, trying to pretend the floor wasn’t
moving. It kept rising and falling beneath me. For a while, I stared at a sleek sculpture of a cat sitting on the counter.
It had the menacing beauty of something alive, its body slippery and fine, the very pattern of its coat transcendent. The
cat gazed at me with its round gold eyes, and I thought it was a presence from another world until it yawned. 1 stroked its
head, and the cat purred automatically like a motor, but I knew it was afraid of me.

Outside, I held on to Vincent’s arm, but this was like holding on to a stick in the middle of the ocean. Neither of us knew
where we were going. Vincent had retreated into a numb insensibility, his steps heavy and flat, and I had lost my mind or
whatever it was that had separated me from the world. A person could lead me anywhere in the city, and I would be unable to
say no. We circled and passed the same storefronts like zombies, and I felt a rising hopelessness as I put one foot in front
of the other.

We gave up finally and went into a McDonald’s. “I need to sit down,” Vincent said. “Could you get me a cheeseburger?” He stumbled
off to a booth and left me squinting under the bright lights. The man ahead of me in line kept turning around to stare at
me. He knew I was sunk deep in some underwater reality. I stepped up to the counter, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to speak.
“One cheeseburger,” I said carefully, and the cashier frowned. All the registers began to beep and flash — I was sure I had
set them off—and the cashier informed me that they would deliver the cheeseburger to my seat.

Vincent was slumped in a booth, his palms splayed out at his sides. He looked at me as I sat down and asked where the cheeseburger
was.

“They’re bringing it to us,” I whispered.

“What?”

I shook my head, afraid the man in the next booth was listening.

“You aren’t going to talk?” Vincent asked.

I shut my eyes, smiling slightly. This was a nightmare. I wanted to be back in our hotel room. The cheeseburger arrived, and
I kept one hand over my face as I watched Vincent eat.

“You’re acting very weird,” he told me. Then he began to sing: “Pa-ra-
noi
-a! Para-
noi
-a! Para-
noi
-a!”

I got up from the booth and waited for Vincent outside. He seemed to take a long time finishing his cheeseburger. Everyone
was looking at him as he attempted to throw away the wrapper on his tray.

And then we were walking again through that unreal city of thin slanting houses and gray water. Amsterdam opened before us
like an empty museum, drawing us into its ever expanding ring of canals, a picturesque labyrinth of narrow streets and bridges,
and all the while I couldn’t shake the presentiment that at the next corner something terrible awaited us. I pressed Vincent’s
arm. Didn’t he see? We were separated from the world by only a fragile layer of skin. Our bodies were bubbles waiting to burst!

“Is that so?” Vincent said.

I wanted to go back to the hotel.

“What are you hoping to find there?” Vincent asked.

Peace and comfort. A place to hide.

“That would be nice,” Vincent said. He took the map out of his pocket and peered at it, then stuffed it back into his coat.
“Hopeless,” he muttered. “I can’t make any sense of it.”

I squeezed his arm, and Vincent took the map out again and moved to the side of a building where there was more light. People
walked by and looked at us. They knew we were lost and regarded us with contempt.

“Our hotel is this way,” Vincent said. We walked several blocks before he realized the numbers were going in the wrong direction.
We turned around, and I was afraid to look up at the houses. “Just a few more blocks, I promise,” Vincent said, but I didn’t
believe him.

And yet here was our hotel, and we were going through the revolving doors. I hurried past the receptionist, trying to still
my face. She knew, of course, she must see this thing all the time. Oh, to get to our ugly little room, what a relief that
would be, and I told the elevator to hurry, please hurry! Down the sober carpeted hallway and then Vincent fiddling with the
door until it sprang open and I collapsed into a heap on the bed. Vincent stood in front of the mirror, trying to get out
of his shirt, but his arms had gotten stuck somehow. “I can’t seem to take off my shirt,” Vincent said, and we looked at each
other and burst into laughter. I rolled onto my stomach, and Vincent doubled over and fell to the floor, where he lay with
his eyes closed.

“Do you think we’re being too loud?” I asked after a moment.

“Not at all,” he replied.

I crawled off the bed and rested my head on his chest, and his fingers stirred my hair gently. “You should just give in,”
he said. “That’s why you suffer. You’re fighting it when you should just let go.”

“Just let go,” I said. “You make it sound so easy. But you might as well tell me to just let go and jump in front of a train.
Just let go and throw myself off a cliff. I can’t help it if I have an instinct to preserve myself.”

Vincent bugged his eyes and bared his teeth at me, and I let out a cry and covered my eyes. I had a sudden creeping sensation
that the warm body I lay against was a stranger’s.

“Come on,” he said. “You can open your eyes.”

I shook my head. I wanted to get away from him, but I was too scared to move.

“I promise I won’t make that face again.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

I opened my eyes, and he leered at me, showing his crooked bottom teeth. “You aren’t to be trusted,” I said, pressing my hands
over my face. I felt my heart racing.

He chuckled. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not coming to get you.”

I heard a rustling sound close by but didn’t move. I knew he was trying to trick me, to scare me into opening my eyes. What
was that sound? Like plastic crinkling. I imagined him smothering me with a plastic bag.

“I guess this means you’re not going to sleep with me tonight?”

Ha! That was the last thing I wanted.

He made as if to get up. “Well, I can go away then.”

“No, don’t go,” I said, lifting my head and gazing at him. I wanted to trust him, but people changed so quickly, and then
it was as if you never knew them at all.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t like it.” He put his arm over his eyes. “Stop looking at me.”

I smiled. “But why?”

“I don’t want to be examined like I’m some kind of specimen.”

“But you’re such an interesting one.”

“I knew it. You’re nothing but a voyeur,” he said. “If I were dying, all you would do is look on.”

I blinked. “It seems I’m not the only one who is paranoid.” I pushed myself off his chest and got into bed, covering my head
with a blanket.

In the middle of the night I woke up and heard voices in the hallway. It was a low murmuring that I wanted, but failed, to
understand. I imagined neighbors congregating outside our door, whispering about us. Any moment they would knock loudly and
burst in. I closed my eyes but couldn’t stop the darkness from swelling inside me. An imperceptible crack had opened along
my skull, and through this tiny hairline fracture, shadows seeped in to stroke and deform my thoughts. There could be no relief,
no place to hide. I pressed my hands over my eyes, watching my thoughts darken and twist.

In the morning, I woke up and saw a pearl gray light emanating from the edge of the curtains, felt the cool, clean sheets
and the bland stillness of the furniture around me, and I knew immediately. My thoughts were clear, and I was in my right
mind. I wanted to wake Vincent up to tell him, but instead I quickly dressed and left the room to take a walk.

Outside, the air was crisp, the sky a delicate blue, and I felt the bright calm of the morning. A man on a bicycle passed
by, reading a newspaper. I crossed over a bridge, looking at the bare trees and lilac brick houses reflected in the water,
and then I stopped at a bakery, where I bought a chocolate croissant and a lovely round apple cake. I found some steps to
sit on and devoured both. You could never find such good pastries in America, so delicious and beautiful, and inexpensive,
too. The woman at the bakery had treated me with just the right courtesy, neither too warm or too cold, and I liked her sensible
air, the neat green dress she wore, her shining coiled hair. Surrounding her were all the things she had made so perfectly
that it was almost a shame to eat them. I returned and bought an apple cake for Vincent before I walked back to the hotel.

Vincent frowned when I told him I had never appreciated my sanity before. I was going to remain delightfully sane for the
rest of the trip. He could do as he pleased, but I wanted my mind to be clear.

“You’re overreacting,” he said. “Last night wasn’t so bad.”

“What are you talking about? It was a nightmare.”

“But don’t you think it’s funny we ended up in a McDonald’s?”

“It’s funny
now.
”

“But remember how we laughed when we got back to the hotel room?”

“Yes. But the rest was a nightmare.”

“I was afraid you’d react like this,” he said, and he got up to take a shower.

For the rest of the trip, I watched Vincent get high, and I suppose what he said about me was true. I had the curiosity and
coldness to look on. I shepherded him about, giving him my arm, and he walked slowly and stiffly by my side like an old man.
He told me about the luminous things he saw, how pale umbrellas glowed like jellyfish and pink flowers vibrated on a woman’s
dress. But mostly he was silent, a tall, morose figure in his black coat, the sleeve on one side dangling lower than the other.
When confronted with his own image in the mirror, he refused to look. What he wanted was to distort his senses, to numb himself
from reality and keep it at bay, and I felt a loneliness watching him. What if life were to catch up with him and not let
him go? At night, as we lay curled together, his arm around my waist, I placed his left hand against my breast and held it
there until I fell asleep.

We returned to New York, and there were small depressions in the snow, a faint glistening as it melted and revealed islands
of green. I thought spring had finally arrived. But it snowed again, and it seemed like perfect winter landscape, everything
covered in whiteness. Snow, like sleep, could make you oblivious to anything.

Vincent broke up with me in June. At the end of July, I was driving to school one last time to clean out my classroom when
I saw Vincent’s car a block ahead of mine. I turned down another street and waited silently by the side of the road until
enough time had passed, and then I drove on to the parking lot and found him waiting for me.

“Well, hello,” he said, smiling. “I have some good news.”

“Oh, yes?” I said brightly. “What is it?”

He told me that he had quit smoking. “My doctor said I would die of a heart attack by the time I was forty if I didn’t stop.”

“But what about all those cigarettes I gave you?”

“They’re still sitting on my dresser, but I haven’t touched them. I haven’t had a drink either. It’s too tempting to smoke
if I have a drink.”

“How dramatic,” I said.

“It’s not really dramatic.”

“I mean, all these life changes you’re making.” I couldn’t help but sound a little bitter. I looked down and saw his bare
feet in sandals. I had never seen him wear sandals before, and the sight of his pale, bloated feet with a dull bluish cast
to them repulsed me, and I was very glad for this feeling. “So do you suffer much?” I asked. “Is it true that you become a
more boring person if you stop smoking?”

“Every hour, I have a craving,” he said.

“You should give me your cigarettes if they tempt you.”

“They don’t tempt me.”

“Well, give them to me anyway,” I said. “Maybe I’ll start smoking.” But even as I said this, I knew it wasn’t true. I would
never become a smoker.

We walked slowly toward the building, and I sensed that he wanted to continue talking to me just as I wanted to continue talking
to him. He told me that he had gone canoeing on the lake by himself one afternoon, that he had taken to swimming laps in the
pool, and I imagined him doing these things, living a more austere and reflective life of solitary, quiet pleasures. The reformed
individual, the hedonist turned ascetic, living moderately and no longer indulging in sensation. And then it struck me that
he was probably doing all this exercise to make himself attractive for a younger woman.

“So how are you doing?” he asked me.

“I’m doing fine,” I said. That wasn’t true. I wasn’t eating and wanted to disappear. But instead of turning as light as a
ghost, my flesh felt tired and heavy, and I dragged myself from one room to another, unable to sleep. The doctor had prescribed
some sleeping pills (I had lied to him and said I had jet lag), but they knocked me out for only four hours before I woke
up again. Awake or asleep, I felt empty, but I would be fine soon enough. That was the sad thing.

Vincent folded his arms around me, and I felt awkward, ready to spring away, but he only pressed me closer. It confused me
because for the moment at least it seemed that he cared for me, that he was the one who was more true. My hand slid down his
arm until I reached the edge of his hand, and I held his last two fingers softly before letting go.

I moved to San Francisco and soon met my businessman, the one etched on my palm whom I was supposed to marry.