The heavy smell of flower petals stroked the walls of my lungs.

I closed my own jazz bar so I could be a man who can write novels as I like. I was pleased about that. This pleasure was connected to the pleasure of writing.

What would tomorrow bring? I wondered. Both hands on the wheel, I closed my eyes. I didn’t feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing. What would become of me tomorrow I did not know.

The best way to think about reality, I had decided, was to get as far away from it as possible.

She was seriously in love, but she never made demands.

I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.

Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn't keep on living like this.