Somebody punches you in the shoulder.
“Ow!” you say.
The professor stands beside you, massaging his fist. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“You punched me! Why did you do that?”
He looks confused. “What do you mean? Oh—my fist?” He studies it. “Well, my fist has free will. It hit you for no reason.”
“What?” You know that you’ve fallen into one of his Philosophical Dialogues, but you’re pissed. “Your fist doesn’t have its own will. It does what you decide.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true.” He draws out the moment, as if you’ve just given him something novel to consider. “Well, I have free will. I punched you for no reason.”
You notice the redhead watching you.
You say, “People don’t do things for no reason.”
“You endorse determinism, then? The claim that everything that happens is predetermined by what’s happened before? So I punched you because, say, I wanted to get your attention. And I wanted to get your attention because you were nodding off. And you were nodding off because—well, I suppose that’s none of my business, is it?”
Your classmates snicker. Except the redhead, who smiles and raises an eyebrow.
“But,” continues the professor, “don’t I have free will? Can’t I make unpredictable decisions, regardless of what’s come before?”
You’re about to speak when you have a sudden insight.
If you think you see how free will and determinism can coexist, how their apparent conflict is merely superficial, go to section 132.
If it strikes you that philosophy is bullshit, and after lunch you drop this course, and then pretty soon you decide to drop the whole university and become a professional musician, go to section 390.
You spend two more weeks in the hospital. The nurses explain about changing the bandages. The therapist gives you exercises to do, and a rubber ball.
When you’re discharged you try to leave your guitar behind. But the nurse with the freckles makes you take it.
You drive—of course you can drive, you’re right-handed—to Paul’s memorial service. Lisa, Paul’s wife, widow, hugs you tightly, careful to avoid your bandaged hands. You hug her back, but when you step apart there’s a piece of the way she looks at you that you can’t manage to interpret as sympathetic. Or friendly.
You sit in the rearmost row of folding chairs. The room fills with people all sitting still, watching and listening. Like a concert audience. Your forearms always tighten up right before a gig, and they do that now. But this time your legs tighten, too, and then they start shaking.
Somebody picks up a guitar to sing one of Paul’s songs. Your heart hammers at twice the song’s tempo as you push back your chair and sneak away.
You reach your apartment as the sun is setting. You lean the guitar case against its usual bookshelf. You’re relieved to finally collapse into your own couch, surrounded by your comfortably familiar clutter. Then, after a few minutes, you take a closer look at your familiar clutter. CDs, sheet music, Guitar Player and Dirty Linen magazines, scattered picks, broken strings. The apartment doesn’t feel so comfortable now.
You stare awhile at the telephone. But all your friends are musicians. You don’t want to watch them as they try to say the right thing. As they try to not look at your hands.
If, despite all that, you do phone one of them, one of your oldest friends, go to section 402.
If you go out for a drive and after an hour come back with three fifths of Scotch, go to section 429.
Your savings—at least, the dollars you don’t spend on the increasingly cheap whiskey that keeps you from hearing your own thoughts—let you hold onto the apartment for three months. The guitars and the mandolin buy you two more. It’s nearly another two before the police show up for the eviction.
It’s late spring by now, so your timing could have been worse. Your hand hurts a lot, though, and the prescriptions keep running out early—and your new pharmacy, who meets you each Wednesday in the alley behind the porn shop, isn’t interested in your Medicaid card.
The guitar case—you’ve still got that. The way it saved your life and all. Also, with a rope tied to the strap-stumps you can sling it over your shoulder with all your stuff inside. The case whacks against your hip when you walk, but that’s not so bad, and when the bottles in there clink against each other—on the happy occasions when there’s more than one—you tell people that you’re making music.
If you meet a guy at the shelter who convinces you to get into treatment, go to section 440.
If you tell that guy to go fuck himself, go to section 472.
472
You should, somehow, have gotten yourself down South someplace before winter arrived. Last night some asshole stole your shopping cart while you slept, so now your only possession that you’re not wearing is the crappy cardboard sign asking people to help a vet. (It’s pretty obvious that not everybody buys that when they first glance at you. But you always hold the sign with your left hand showing good and plain, and then nobody asks anything.)
This afternoon you kind of lost track of the time, and when you finally got to the shelter it was full. So now you’re heading toward the bridge by the river, where at least you’ll be out of the wind.
You must have turned the wrong way, though, because you’re walking along right next to the frozen river. You look up, and then around, and finally you find the bridge, way the hell behind you.
As you turn, your foot slides onto the ice. Which isn’t as thick as it looked. You yank it out quick, though, and it doesn’t feel wet. Of course, both of your feet were already kind of numb.
If you think you can still make it to the bridge, go to section 476.
If the idea of just lying down right here and sleeping in until noon is too tempting to pass up, go to section 491.
You wake to noise and light. Your chest hurts. You squint against the glare and lift your head just enough to see that some asshole has stolen both your goddamn coats and all your shirts and left you lying here, covered in just a sheet like a corpse. You try to grab the railings and sit up, but your wrists are tangled in some straps and your arms don’t move.
“Hey!” you yell. “Hey! Hey!”
Somebody grabs your shoulder. Red hospital scrubs. Nurse, you think.
Both of your shoulders get shoved down against the mattress. Your nurse says, “Take it easy.”
“My case,” you demand. “Where’s my case?”
You twist around to see her freckles, but she’s up behind your head too far.
“We’ve got your case, don’t worry.”
Of course you’re not worried. “The Coast Guard,” you explain to her.
“Sure,” she says. “Take it easy.”
Damn, she’s not even listening to you! “The Coast Guard!” you repeat. “They’re supposed to bring my case!”
If you keep trying to get through to her, until a warmth slides up inside your arm and then you feel sleepy, go to section 501.
If you shut up for a minute and look around and realize that you’re not where you thought you were, and then you quietly ask the nurse if maybe you can stay here a few days and get some help, go to section 525.