Or back to the simulation hypothesis. He thought again of the programmers at the Interstellar Bangalore, the ones responsible for this whole universe. “Lord,” he said to whichever one had been assigned the string of code known as Vinod Mehta. But that word was too religious, too “Lord Rama,” for its own good. “Sir!” Too colonial, too deferential, too in need of an exclamation point at the end. “Entity,” he said, finally, which felt right, if bureaucratic.
“Entity responsible for this,” he said, “I hope and pray, if that’s how you like to be approached, prayerfully, that you are not a sadist. That you will deliver me from this in due time. That you will allow me to reach the end point and exit from whatever you have created.” He stopped and looked around. The mist was billowing now as if he had indeed caught the attention of a vast malevolent entity, or at least its production department. But how beautiful it looked, this soupy violence of the swirling damp. How well it outlined the stark nakedness of the trees, every one now a Russian birch in Vinod’s Uncle Vanya–influenced imagination （and in his imagination only）。 And not all were naked either. The Japanese maples were starting to come in red. An extended branch hung over Vinod, and he could make out a baby woodpecker in his tiny crimson cap trying unsuccessfully to learn his parents’ craft. But with each peck, the bird overturned and fell off the branch, then fluttered up to try again. And all this routine activity was happening as the mist convulsed around them, as if the bird’s code ran independently of the mist’s code, as if they had been programmed separately.
He thought of walking up toward the hill, toward whatever safety his Lullaby Cottage promised him, the safety of the notarized documents at the bottom of his luggage. （Was the “Lullaby” another hint at the drugs keeping him under?） Another light, muted and modern, flickered on in Karen’s bungalow, in what Vinod did not know was her bathroom. It calmed him like the sight of a lighthouse in the storm, and now the mist felt gentle and caressing, a wet sponge pressed against a child’s forehead to keep the fever down. He could not explain the sudden change in his mood, the absence of fear. He did not know that she was sitting down on the toilet with a copy of the novel he had written almost two decades ago, her eyesight straining at the ten-point font, the complicated sentences running into one another, but slowly, buoyantly, replicating the circularity of its author’s mind, which she knew and loved.
The baby woodpecker had finally claimed his birthright, and the sound of his tiny drill echoed through the meadow. Vinod sat down on his Brazilian area rug and opened Uncle Vanya again. He read: “A country house on a terrace. In front of it a garden. In an avenue of trees, under an old poplar…It is three o’clock in the afternoon of a cloudy day.”
It was so, precisely.
6
Ed used a slow-burning charcoal briquette, which kept things moist, a must for the tender sardines he was about to grill. Since the walk with Dee, he had spent the day preparing for dinner. He would make up for his laziness the day before. He would give them （fine, her） the best meal they had ever had in a rural setting. The recipe for a spicy and unusual variant of tired old mayonnaise-heavy vitello tonnato came from one of the finest chefs in Turin, and right now Ed did not care that it was a summertime dish as the fickle weather kept playing with his hopes and dreams.
The mist was finally lifting, just in time for an early dinner. He had sent Senderovsky on several culinary errands, and now he spotted the Russian on the front lawn, down on his knees, poking at what must have been a hole in the ground. Was he fussing with the well? The shower situation was even worse than usual; Ed had barely gotten a trickle of lukewarm, sulfur-scented water after his walk. He watched Senderovsky croak up the hill, his face blanched, his hair agitated. “Have you seen anyone on the lawn today?” the landowner asked.
“Not since you threatened to put up the badminton net,” Ed said.
“Strange, very strange,” Senderovsky muttered. His heart was aflutter, Vinod’s novel was missing from Steve’s winter palace. And just when he had found the perfect place for it in a disused compost bin in the garage.
“I’m going to need you and Vinod soon to help out with dinner,” Ed said.
“Aye-aye,” Senderovsky said, giving a crisp salute. “Is that a Negroni?”
“I found a bottle of vintage 1960s Campari in the larder,” Ed said. “Do you mind? It looked pretty rare.”
“I have such a thing?” Senderovsky asked, as if he was speaking of a dolphin caught living in his basement. “Help yourself, then. I’m going to lie down for a minute.” He coughed loudly into his hand, tasting metal.