I was at the site of the original Guinness pub, in Ireland somewhere, as if that were a thing. The place where the very brew was born. It was deceptively modest on the outside, just a plain old corner building with stucco walls. Its name was written on the outside in the original characters, not even Irish but something ancient and runic, indecipherable. I went in. It was what you might expect: a big song and dance about where you were and why it mattered. Like the Tardis, it was bigger on the inside. Tourists circulated from the bar section to the meat pie section to the elaborate, expanded downstairs with a full French bakery. Still the warped floors betrayed centuries of wear and I marveled at the cost and effort it must take to keep it up.

I was alone in a new apartment, sorting out some things before S. arrived. The Super Bowl was on, between the Cowboys and the Broncos. I suddenly felt very tired, and with some regret fell asleep at the beginning of the game. When I awoke it was late in the fourth and the Cowboys were up 75-10. Then I was at a large outdoor party where the band was playing, at the sprawling compound that belonged to our friends. We created an enormous pile of dirty dishes and I felt compelled to help with the washing. I grew aware that I’d played with another band, with a friend on drums, at the party earlier. What song had we played? I tried to remember. It was “Green Eyed Lady,” echoing a dream one of my bandmates actually had, long ago. Word came that there’d been an accident out on the road. A woman who’d just arrived had witnessed it and was shaken. Someone died, someone she knew.

I was plunged into a Don DeLillo novel, sometimes as an observer and sometimes a character. It concerned a group of people who had certain magical abilities, notably to disappear. There was also some top secret government operation going on. A person in charge, trials and tribulations. Peril. The group was somehow involved. They’d been together, or worked together, for many years. Naturally there was a history of shifting romantic entanglements. But all remained friends. There was something vaguely sinister about what they did, what they were capable of. Or maybe not. I perused a photo album of their times together. There they are seated at a banquet facility. A wedding perhaps. There were pictures of them in little groups of three or four. I thought, this is a running theme in DeLillo novels. A murky world below the one we all inhabit. Shadowy figures up to something or other. I struggled to remember the plots of his other books and reproached myself for not paying enough attention while I read. A recent one largely took place poolside at a resort or country club, that I knew. I couldn’t really remember what happened though. The phrase reread DeLillo popped into my head, as though this were something other people habitually did and I could—and should—do too. A voice in my head, someone else’s voice, declared that DeLillo’s dialog is brilliant in its depth of understanding of the voices of real people in the real world, and I thought: is that really true? The group was now gathering on a wide trail in the woods, hikers and tourists passing by. They were all to disappear one last time, one by one. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. One woman began. An object she touched, a stone maybe, disappeared first. Then slowly parts of her did too.