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.