It’s not going to be easy. Although he knows exactly where he left off in his story, he first has to organize the potpourri of loose pages and index cards that are stuffed in the large plastic bag. Perhaps he should forget about the notes and just grab the script itself, whose pages are bound with an elastic band. After finding it near the bottom of the bag, he’s soon holding the last typewritten page in his hand. Where the hell have you been? asks a voice in the lobby of the hotel in front of the Grand Central Station. The girl quickly turns. It’s Cousin McGregor, who’s been waiting some time for her. We’re leaving, he says. Let’s go. We’ve already checked out of our rooms. He leads her through a back door into an alleyway where a car is parked. On the way, the cousin asks about her work, but she can only repeat what she’s already told him about the No World, while he, in turn, cannot see past the comparison he’s already made with Leon Kowalski, the replicant. She may as well be writing his untold story, about his false, implanted memories. For the rest of the drive, both are silent. The cousin is now staying in a room in the suburbs, where her luggage and her father are waiting for her. Her father says he’d prefer if she stayed a few more days before going back home. Your mother’s concerned, he tells her, before insinuating she should keep her mouth shut about whatever he and the cousin are up to. So that’s it, mutters the girl, knowing deep down that she was right, but thinking they’ve gone right back to the beginning, to the endless waiting for someone to contact them, perhaps even the scientist in the classically-cut suit. All that’s changed is the address. The screenwriter feels he’s never been more in tune with his writing. The words are flowing out of him like a torrent, and he attributes this to the state of mind of someone who, having been cast out of the world, has relinquished all worldly concern. To write, then wait to die: there’s nothing more for him to do. The story was once beyond his reach, just beyond the tips of his fingers, but now he has it in the palm of his hand. He looks around for the waitress and asks for another coffee. He leans back in his chair and readies his fingers on the keys of the typewriter. First, a coup d’oeil at his new office: not bad. He’s never written properly in a café before, but now it seems to him the perfect place to be writing, especially when the words are flowing out of him like a torrent, meaningful words that are more than just a series of mellifluous incoherencies. He wouldn’t even deign to call it a mere screenplay anymore, but that doesn’t matter now. He’s writing a story, and that’s enough. He’d love to call his wife right now and gloat, but the poor dear must smell awful. Probably full of maggots too. You never can tell with the variable August weather. All the screenwriter has to sustain himself is coffee, water, a sandwich every now and then, and if he’s lucky, a pastry. He’s clinging in his mind to the old cliché that nothing can prevent progress, thinking this as his story rushes through his mind from start to finish, his fingers poised, tempted by the keys. He doesn’t even need his index cards or notebooks. He knows every turn in the labyrinth, where to introduce a new scene, where to speed the action up or slow it down, where to find the answer to some central question. He holds his script in the palm of his hand, and sees it as a bird would see it, or perhaps an aerial photographer. He knows he doesn’t have much time left to traverse it, but things will move along faster now that he knows exactly where he’s going. Writing the screenplay no longer seems like a chore, and although it may be hard to believe, considering what’s become of him, for the first time in years, he actually feels young. He even feels that things are starting to go his way. Perhaps he’s finally lost his marbles. He nods his head without realizing, as if unconsciously approving the possibility. Perhaps he’s gone mad and doesn’t know it. It’s as if he’s the one who was hypnotized and not the girl. But there’s no way someone with his experience could be that suggestible. Besides, he doesn’t remember attending any sessions with a hypnotist — neither recently nor when he was still living with his wife. But what if he was hypnotized to forget he was hypnotized? What if it was a practical joke? No, there’s no way it was joke, or a vendetta either. She’s dead, and dead people don’t make jokes. If he had to attribute it to something, he’d say it was the fasting. Not eating has somehow purged him, distilled and strengthened his faculties enough to conclude his story. He’s not thinking about it in terms of a screenplay because he knows it’s a story, first and foremost, and he must write it down as it flows out of him, and not stop writing until the end. Occasionally he stops typing and wonders if he’ll wake up at some point and realize it was all a hallucination, and that everything he’s writing in the café is only a product of that hallucination, if he’ll snap out of it and read over what he’s written and see only complete gobbledygook. Fortunately, this sort of thing happens to him very rarely — seeing what he’s done as worthless — and the feeling only lasts a very short time. The compulsion driving him now is something quite different. Then he cleans his glasses and keeps typing. The only other times he will allow himself to remove his fingers from the keys are to light a cigarette or to order more coffee from the waitress. He only asks for two more days, as if requesting an extension, two more days and he’ll be finished. Then he can roll over and die. The waitress watches him keenly as he says these words, and he looks back at her indifferently. He knows it’s too late now for there to be anything between them. “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills,” he says, and she smiles at him, a proper smile for the first time, a sincere smile. And although the screenwriter’s face is haggard, piteous, he still manages to smile back at her. The clack and plink of the typewriter is unrelenting, rising above the sound of the music over the speakers or the murmurs of customers conversing, some of whom stare at him, a beggar working like a man possessed, and he knows they’re watching him and think he’s a beggar possessed, but he doesn’t care, because he knows they’re absolutely correct. He strikes the keys demoniacally, his two hands moving as if there were three, sounding like a trio of tap-dancing feet, or two with the help of a cane. He sees himself as if he were in a dream from which he cannot be awoken. When he eventually runs out of cigarettes, he goes to the vending machine and buys another pack. A writer works all the time, he never stops working. To think is also to work, and when he’s not writing, he’s thinking. And can a man stop himself from thinking?