"I don't fucking exist, I don't fucking exist."

Shoppers around him were beginning to tense. In New York City, the individual who talked to himself was treated like an unexploded bomb in a crowded store.

He moved on for one final try. His solo albums had sold nothing like the numbers of the ones with the band, but it was worth checking. There was nothing under G, either. Gibson looked around the store. Some of the names were comfortingly familiar: Lou Reed, Miles Davis, Cher, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis, The Who, and The Clash. They were all there, just as they should be. There were others, however, that meant nothing to him. Who the hell were Belinda Carlisle, Stevie Nicks, or Page Seven? None of them had existed when he'd left for Luxor, and now they seemed to be established stars with long careers behind them.

"Now it's me that doesn't exist."

He was most upset by a band called the Rolling Stones. Before all this, there hadn't been any Rolling Stones. He went to their bin and found that they had dozens of records on sale, records going back to the early sixties. It was insane. They had taken his slot in history. The look, the image, the attitude, it was pure Holy Ghosts. The only difference seemed to be that the Rolling Stones had kept it together while the Holy Ghosts had fucked up.

It was while he was looking through the Rolling Stones records that the tilt sign lit up in his brain. He had no clear memories of what happened next. He knew that he had started screaming and people had stampeded away from him.

He screamed at a blond girl behind the checkout. "Where are my fucking records? What happened to my fucking music?"

The security guard had attempted to subdue him and Gibson slugged him. At some point he'd also been throwing records and CDs around. "What happened to my fucking music?"

Along the line, the police showed up, and he could vividly remember the firm hand on his head, stopping him hitting it on the doorframe as they lowered him into the blue-and-white.

They put him in a holding cell on his own. This was probably because he'd had over a thousand dollars in cash on him, which separated him from the average, run-of-the-mill drunk. He sat in the corner on the floor, feeling completely drained and mindless. The sooner they took him across to Bellevue the better.

A lot later, an NYPD detective came to talk to him. "Do you realize that you don't exist?"

Gibson, who had recovered a little by that time, looked up, slack-faced. "That's what I was trying to tell them in the store. I'm not even history anymore."

"You're not in anyone's files, either. We've run you through both local and federal. You don't show up anywhere. You care to comment on that?"

Gibson shook his head. "Not really."

"Have you ever been fingerprinted?"

"Dozens of times."

"So why is it that they aren't on record anywhere? Do you have a driver's license?"

"Haven't had a driver's license in years. I used to be driven everywhere."

"That must have been nice."

"You get used to it."

"So life was good for you?"

Gibson nodded. "Sure, life was good. I was a big-ass fucking rock star."

"So how come no one has ever heard of you?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

"I went off to another dimension and when I came back things were different. Not very different, but different enough that I didn't exist."

The detective's face didn't even flicker. "And what did you do in this other dimension, Joe? It is Joe, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's Joe."

"You want to tell me what you did there?"

Gibson's voice was flat. "I shot the president, narrowly avoided a nuclear war, and talked to a god."

"It's sounds like you had quite a time."

"It was actually very stressful."

"You take drugs, Joe?"

Gibson nodded. "Sure, all the time."

"What kind of drugs, Joe?"

"What've you got?"

"You want to tell me about the money you had on you?"

"It's legit, my money."

"Where did you get it?"

"A friend gave it to me."

"This friend have a name?"

"Her name's Nephredana. She's an idimmu, a minor demon."

She looked at him long and hard. "You're a weird one, Joe. You ever kill anyone?"

Gibson shook his head. "Not in this dimension. Not yet."

He threw in the "not yet" as bait. He was quite ready to go to Bellevue. They'd knock him out there and he'd be able to sleep. The detective didn't rise to it, however, and just kept on asking routine questions, mainly about the money and what drugs he'd been taking.

Finally she stood up. "You're lucky you have rich friends."

"I don't have any friends, rich or otherwise."

"You may not know it but you do. They're paying to put you in this private clinic."

Alarms went off in Gibson's head. "I'm not going to any private clinic. I want to go to Bellevue."

"You don't have any choice in the matter. Your friends went in front of a judge and got a temporary order on you."

She tapped on the inside of the cell door for it to be opened. When it swung back, she beckoned to two burly men in hospital whites. "Okay, guys, he's all yours."

Gibson didn't resist as the two male nurses put white canvas restraints on him and led him through the precinct house and out to a private ambulance. He didn't resist because he was through. All the fight had gone out of him. He was burned-out. The drive was a short one, and inside of a half hour Nurse Lopez was shooting him up with his first cocktail of tranquilizers.

The White Room

HIS FIRST SESSION with Kooning after the escape bid was a wretched hour of recrimination.

"I'm very disappointed in you, Joe."

"I only wanted to try it on the outside. I would have thought that you'd be pleased with my progress toward recovery."

"I'm not pleased at all, Joe. I think your behavior was willful and childish. Did you really think that you could survive out there?"

"I was going to give it a shot."

"What did you think you were going to do?"

"I was going to be a wino on Forty-second Street."

"Please don't be flippant."

"Is it flippant to want to be free?"

"Here at the clinic, we have a responsibility to keep you from doing yourself harm."

"So freedom's harmful?"

"You are a very sick man, Joe, sicker than you realize. Your freedom was only removed from you because you were a danger to yourself."

"So freedom is dangerous?"

"Freedom is an idea that you shouldn't dwell on. It's largely an illusion at the best of times."

"Perhaps I like the illusion."

"That's hardly the point. Recovery can only come when you recognize your illusions for what they are."

"I always thought that freedom was reality, or maybe nothing else to lose."

"Don't paraphrase pop songs at me."

"They're my business."

"Your business is getting well."

"I got well when I stopped taking the medicine."

Kooning rubbed her chin.

"Perhaps we should talk about the way that you attempted to deceive those who were looking after you regarding your medication."

"I felt better than I do now. I'm so fucked up I can hardly count my legs."

"You can't be an objective judge of that."

"I can't? I thought how one felt was a pretty subjective thing."

"You decided to exercise your free will regarding your medication and all you succeeded in doing was to throw the whole regimen out of balance and precipitate this ridiculous display of defiance."

The conversation went on and on like this for more than forty-five minutes, and then, just as Gibson was thinking that it hid to be over, there was a knocking on the door. Kooning looked up and frowned. Therapy sessions were never interrupted.