"You know what your problem is?"

Jacob laughed. "Like you know."

"No, I'm serious, man." Another swig. "Lemme spell it out."

"Alright. I'm all fucking ears."

I grinned. "Glad to hear it. Glad to hear it. Makes my day. So here goes. What your problem is, is you don't care what happens to her. I mean, she could get hit by a car and you'd feel zip. You're a blank, a null."

Jacob laughed ruefully. "Thanks a lot. That really helps."

More beer. "No, now look, you gotta take this farther. I wasn't talking about that car hitting her as some random example. I mean it specifically. If she was hit by a car, you wouldn't feel a thing. That isn't a deal with you and her, that's a deal with you. You're out of sync with humanity. You're turning into a misanthrope. Sarah, she's just a symptom. Your relationship with her isn't the problem. Your relationship with all the people around you is the problem."

Jacob's features hardened slightly. "You mean I wouldn't feel nothing if you got hit by a car?"

"Naw, look, I've known you too long. This is a recent phenomenon. It's like there's a grandfather clause in your sense of reality that lets you still care about people you known a while, like me or your parents or your first girlfriend or whatever. I'm talking about people you get to know now, people you've gotten to know in the last couple years. You know? Those are the people you could give a shit about."

Jacob relaxed back into his chair in the pub and took a drink of his own beer. "Okay, so saying you're right, then what? What do I do about Sarah?"

"Beats the hell outta me. This ain't a Sarah thing, you understand? I can't tell you what to do with that situation. What I can tell you to do is to try and deal with the way you feel towards people in general. It's the principle; Sarah's the practice."

"So what do I do? Volunteer at the Salvation Army? Go to church? Take classes in give-a-shit?"

"I dunno, just whatever. Maybe you can think about what it is that makes you care for the people you do still care for, and try to focus on that in the future. You know. Accentuate the positive."

"Now that is such bullshit I don't believe it. How do you just decide 'Okay, I'll accentuate the fucking positive?' It's not some switch I can turn on."

"Well duh, but bullshit or not that switch exists. You can't just turn it on, I grant you, and I'm not sayin' that's what you can do. But don't think of it as a switch. Think of it as a process. You come in one end and you go out the other. Somewhere along the way that switch gets tripped but you don't even know it."

"It sounds like you're saying I've lost my soul or something."

"Or something, man, or something, I'm an atheist, but yeah, that's the shit I mean."

"Okay, I'll write it in my appointment book. 'Monday. Venture into Hades and confront Pluto to ask for the return of my soul.' Will that make you happy?"

I kicked back and took another gulp. "No, not particularly. But it might make you happy."

Jacob burst out laughing. "Thank you, Mister Therapist. Where's the bathroom in this place?"

"Back that way," I said, pointing, "to the left."

"I gotta get rid of some negative energy," Jacob said as he got up and walked off in the direction of the men's room.

I sucked on my beer some more. There was a bowl of peanuts on the table we'd picked. I'd been eating one, two, three, nibbling compulsively, the whole time. That bowl of peanuts was the object of diminishment in my eyes, and I seemed determined to reduce it to nothingness.

Jacob was in the bathroom. I scanned the room, checking out who was there. No one I knew, but that wasn't the point. I checked out the weird-looking people, the people who looked like character actors, the people who reminded me of someone I'd known, the women I thought were cute, the waitress who I wanted to bring me another bottle of beer, and anyone whose appraisal promised a moment's respite from the crushing boredom I could feel all around me.

Jacob was still in the bathroom. I started getting nervous for no particular reason. I looked at the people around me and thought I was catching them looking at me when my head was turned. It seemed like I was suddenly privy to a whole network of secret glances, hidden facial expressions, clandestine meanings handed out to everyone in the room but me. I got more nervous. I was right. They were talking about me, at half a dozen tables, even single guys on barstools were thinking inner thoughts about me. What were they saying? I looked down, quickly, casually, to make sure I was wearing clothes. I was, of course. I wasn't that far off. But the certainty was reassuring.

Jacob was fucking still in the fucking bathroom. It was getting louder in here. There were five speakers mounted on the walls in the room, haphazardly, all blaring music. I realized that the speakers were positioned in such a way as to ensure that I was hearing the music louder than anyone else. They formed a nexus of sound waves that caught me in their net, perhaps doing strange things to my physiology, my synapses, my blood pressure. The music, I don't know what the hell it was, but it was loud and getting louder and it was making it hard for me to think. I looked from speaker to speaker, grokking the deal and knowing why it was weirding me out--because of the way they'd set up the speakers to freak me--but the knowledge didn't help. I was still unnerved, still antsy, still weirded.

Then Jacob came back.

"I'm hungry man," he said. "If I get some nachos with stuff all over them, will you eat some?"

I took a swig of beer and smiled. "Yup. I'm not starving, but my stomach wouldn't be unhappy to see some of nature's goodness coming its way instead of all this beer I'm drinking."

"Cool. So you want the chili and cheese, or the whole deal with sour cream and jalopenos and all that stuff?"

"The latter. Exquisite, man. Make it happen."

Jacob nodded and took a swig of beer. "So you gonna help a poor man buy his meal?"

I shook my head. "I'm not thinking straight. Of course I will." I pulled out my wallet and handed him a few bills. "Knock me out, daddy-o."

Jacob pulled a few ones from his own wallet and pressed them together with mine. "Be right back," he said, and got up to go place the order.

I slipped my wallet back into my pocket and froze. I realized that my hand was attached to my wallet, and if I made any sudden moves the skin would pull free and I'd have bleeding, shredded fingers. That was just no good, no damn good at all. So I pulled the wallet back out and used my other hand to play with it--checking out the stuff in the card pockets and all that crap inside the wallet. I kept twitching the fingers that held the wallet, trying to tell if they had come loose. They were still stuck fast. Just what the hell was going on I couldn't tell you.

Jacob came back. "On the way," he said. "Gonna be a few minutes."

"Cool," I said, and put the wallet back. "So anyway, like I was saying, I think you've gone a little off in the last couple years, you know? I mean all you talk about is how the human race is fucked up and how we're speeding into destruction and all that stuff. Now that's all well and good, man, but you're taking it too far. It's like you're lecturing about cancer so much that you get the idea you've got it even if you don't."

Jacob shook his head again. "Nah, man, you don't know what you're talking about. I'm fine, it's just Sarah, she's all fucked up. Her dad hasn't said a word to her in five years and shit. She's the one with the problem. I care about her, you know? But she just won't deal with a relationship."

"Shit, Jacob, shut up about Sarah and her dad. That's not the deal. You're projecting your own problems onto someone else, okay? I mean, think about it. It makes sense. The problem isn't Sarah's--I don't mean she's perfect, yeah, I'm sure she's just as fucked up as the next person--but you've got this real specific problem and you're pretending she's the one who has it because you don't wanna face it yourself. You know?"

Jacob grimaced. "You're fucked in the head. I don't think like you say I think at all. You're pulling that outta your ass."

I leaned over the table emphatically. "The hell I am! Damn, Jacob, you know yourself better than I do, or at least that's the story. Think about it. Think about the relationships--friends and lovers both--that you've made in the last few years. Haven't they all gone to shit? Put it together, man. You've been on this misanthrope kick for too long and it's affecting your brain."

"Shit, maybe, but I just don't see it that way. I try to talk to Sarah and she just clams up. She won't deal."

"Yeah, but did you ever stop to think that it's what you're talking about that is clamming her up, not her fucked-up father or whatever? I mean, we aren't all perfect here, we aren't all Lancelot or something."

"Yeah I know that, but I mean, it's serious, she'll just clam up and won't say a thing. I don't mean she won't answer my question, I mean she won't say a thing, not a word, she just shakes her head and looks away. It's abnormal, man, she's got some serious shit going on with her."

The nachos arrived. I dug in.

"Yeah, serious shit. Okay, so maybe she does have some problems. But you gotta be aware of your own problems, too. I mean, I can't help you with Sarah. I don't know her, you know, I mean not really. But you I know. You I know like my own brother if I had one. And you, my friend, are locked on a dangerous course and you gotta grab the captain by the balls and tell him to change course before you rip off his fucking privates."

Jacob laughed and munched nachos covered with drippy slimy shit. "Great, okay, just show me where the big steering wheel is and I'll tell him what to do."

"You do that." I shoved another handful of nachos in my mouth and chewed quickly, then swallowed. "I gotta go, man, I gotta get to work."

"Yeah, alright. Thanks for the beer."

"No problem, no problem, just lemme know how things go and think about what I fucking said, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I will, man, I will."

I got up and walked away. As I walked, the pub shimmered and became insubstantial. I dashed up the stairs as the entire place collapsed into nothingness. Jacob, I was sure, would escape somehow. The rest were gone.

On the street, I turned out of the alley where the pub door was and walked up the street in the bright afternoon sun. I'd become insubstantial again. People walking down the street passed right through me. I didn't mind. As I passed through each one, I could hear their thoughts briefly, like in that German movie with the angels. One person was thinking about the shirt I was wearing. I took comfort in this, and wondered if in another few minutes I'd be able to fly again. That would be nice.