Dave Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity

I thought of the man's brain, of the uninterrupted hours of time inside his head, without distraction, without dialogue.

– I don't know how you do it, sir.

– Will, you had this peace of mind and you might again.

– That much I know is not true.

"We're almost back," I said. "What time is it?"

It was a little after 2. We'd started the day in Casablanca sixteen hours before and we'd almost died – we were almost butchered in the alleys of Marrakesh – or possibly not. But it felt so real. It was the closest I'd ever come to feeling so near to the end. No seizure or flurry or fainting had come so near.

We were parked now, in town, on the main strip. The road was wide and stray cars sped past with groans and whinnies and shushes. Hand's head was resting on the side window, and he was looking up at the moon.

"Is that full or almost-full?"

"Almost full."

I was ready for sleep. It was 2:30. We drove toward the hotel and stopped at a light; the hotel's vertical sign, neon, was visible two intersections ahead.

A car pulled alongside us. Four people in their mid-twenties, three women and a man, were crowded into a silver compact. The light went green and we drove. At the next light they stopped next to us, on the left of our car. The woman in the passenger seat leaned out, urging Hand to roll down his window. He did.

"Bonjour," she said. She was Moroccan, magnificent. Next to skin like that, ours seemed so rough, like burlap woven with straw.

"Bonjour," Hand said.

"You're English," she said.

"American."

"Oh! Good. Where are you going?" Her English was seamless. Everyone's was. I had sixty words of Spanish and Hand had maybe twice that in French, and that was it. How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated then found hugely comforting.

The eight eyes in their car were watching, faces close to the windows. It was a small car. The light turned green. No one moved.

"Home," Hand said. "We just came from the mountains."

"The mountains? Why?"

We were talking in the middle of the road.

"Long story," Hand said.

"What?"

"Never mind."

The light was red again.

"So what are you doing now?"

"I dunno. What are you doing?"

"You should come out!"

"What? Where? Where are you going?" Hand was leaning out now, arms draped out the window. I think my mouth was wide open. This was unbelievable.

The woman ducked her head back into the car. Inside there was a quick and animated debate. She re-emerged.

"Club Millennium," she said.

Hand turned to me. I had a surge. It felt good. We told them we'd follow. We knew we had to. We'd been up for twenty hours maybe but it felt so good to say yes. Where had they come from? In all my life I'd never been approached this way, the car pulling up, the Where you going? It was something I wish had happened hundreds of times. I was a looker – someone who looked over at every car at every traffic light, hoping something would happen, and almost never finding anyone looking back – always everyone looking forward, and every time I felt stupid. Why should people look over at you? Why would they care?

But these people do. They threw out a line and I felt like I was living a third or fourth life, someone else's life. It felt like regaining, in the morning while slowly waking, the ability to make a fist. I'd been so close and ready for the end – closer and more ready than I'd ever been before – and now I wanted this, all this, I wanted everything that would happen:

We would meet them there, and get out, and would be happy to be out of the car.

We would be ashamed of our clothes, of our Walgreen's sweatshirts, of our strong personal smells.

We would pay for everyone, $100 in cover charges, while knowing – really being electrically conscious of the fact – that that money could perhaps be better spent.

We would walk down a slow dark burgundy flight of stairs, everything rounded – the inside of an aorta – and at the bottom, get assaulted by flood of mirrors, glass, chrome.

The place would still be busy, the clientele half Moroccan and half European, all of a powerful but lightly-worn sort of wealth, the place dripping with what I guessed – I'd never seen it in person – to be decadence.

While I would wait for the drinks everyone, all five of them including Hand, would bound off to the dancefloor, holding hands, like a string of kids connected, cut from folded construction paper.

I would want to dance. I would be too sober, and would be watching the purses. I would sink into the booth, grinning for them, soul scraping me from inside.

I would note that I was often too sober, watching the purses.

When they would rest, I would try to talk to the Moroccans, but the music would overwhelm us, like talking through wind and rain. Two of the women would be in law school, wanting to be judges.

I would try to explain how we had been in the mountains, looking for people to give money to – and where are your poor, by the way? Why none in the mountains? – but they wouldn't hear me, or would maybe just pretend at incoherence.

Hand would dance with one of them, in silver snakeskin pants and radiant in shape, while the other three would leave, smiling and shrugging at me, as I worked on a fifth vodka-soda.

Hand would do the shopping cart.

Hand would do the sprinkler.

Hand would do the worm. Hand could do the worm.

I would know that in any city, at an hour like this, there are people sleeping. That most people are sleeping. But that in any city, in any cluster of people, there are a few people who are awake at this hour, who are both awake and dancing, and it's here that we need to be. That if we are living as we were this week, that we had to be awake with the people who were still dancing.

Even if I couldn't loosen my head enough to dance myself.

After an hour we would find ourselves in a booth with half a dozen Germans – four men, three women, all in their mid-thirties, on a company retreat, we would learn. "We are here to reep it up!" one would say, then snuff a lit match with her tongue.

Hand would look over at me.

"You okay?" he would say.

"I'm good," I would say.

"You look better," he would say.

And I would know I was different for a while. We had beaten death yet again and we were now beating sleep and it would seem like we could do without either forever. And I then would have the idea, seeming gloriously true for a flickering moment, that we all should have a near-death experience weekly, twice weekly – how much we'd get done! The clarity we'd know!

"I want to keep going," Hand said. It was four o'clock, and we'd left, dropped off the last two women we'd danced with, at their home, a condo complex looking like grad-student housing. He was driving, and had stopped the car a block away.

"No," I said. "Where?"

"Fez. It's only four hours. Less maybe."

"We can't. We fly tomorrow. Later today."

"I know. Still."

I had come crashing down. My eyes hurt.

"Let's sleep," I said, letting us both down.

"Sleep is boring. We go to Fez and come back in time."

He was right but I couldn't let him know this. I could barely talk I was so wrecked.

"We have to sleep," I whispered.

"You don't know that. Not for sure."

"I do. Right now I do. I can't even see."

"We could keep doing this. Stretch it out. We still have $10,000. That would last us month maybe, at least. Two."

The car was clouding with our words.

"That girl tonight, the first one – she was the most ridiculous woman I've ever been that close to."

"I want to stay so badly."

"You just said you wanted to move."

"I do. Maybe we go to Siberia but come back."