THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2019 63
T
he whole business led my wife
to suggest a conference with
our dear friends Pam and Becky,
who were discreet and worldly and kind.
She wrote them:
Hey wonderful people! Can we drag you
over for dinner Wednesday? Short notice—but
there’s something we’d like to talk over with you.
I prepared the meal—cucumber soup,
grilled chicken breast, and a lentil-and-
scallion salad. Cooking had been Viki’s
thing, not mine, but I’d been stuck at
home for months and the kitchen had
become a place of recreation. Also, my
relationship with my body had changed.
Pam and Becky arrived on the dot,
at seven. My illness had made me very
small and very light, and they embraced
me gently. “He looks so young,” Becky
said to Viki. “Where’s Molly?”
Our daughter, Molly, aged five, was
spending the evening with Viki’s sister,
Maya. Maya and Molly didn’t know
what was going on. Nobody knew, not
even my physician.
I poured everyone a drink—purified
water, in my case—and without further
ado Viki announced, “Something strange
has happened.” This was planned. Viki
is an inarguably sane and well-balanced
person with no history of hoaxing or
chain-yanking. She is the perfect person
to break unfathomable news. It’s not that
I’ve ever been the class clown, but my
physical weakness had for some reason
lessened my authority. “This is all super-
sensitive and confidential,” Viki said.
“Uh-oh,” Becky said.
“If we’re going to have a top-secret
discussion, I’m going to sit down,” Pam
said.
We joined her at the table. My wife
said, “I don’t know how else to put this.”
She moved her hand in my direction.
“He’s developed the ability to fly.”
Our friends fell into a silence of in-
comprehension and alarm—as if we’d
announced a religious conversion. Then
Pam did a short laugh and said, “Fly
how?”
“As in fly like a bird,” Viki said. “Fly.”
“ ‘Bird,’” I said, “is maybe taking it
too far.”
“I don’t get it,” Becky said.
At Viki’s signal, I fetched my lap-
top. Everyone turned toward the screen.
I played the nine-second clip that Viki
had filmed with her phone.
“Let’s see that again,” Pam said.
We all watched it twice more. Both
times it showed the same thing: me lev-
itating in that very room and then sort
of scooting from the kitchen to the win-
dows of our eleventh-floor apartment
with my arms defensively stretched out
ahead of me. I reach up with one hand
and touch the ceiling. The clip ends.
Pam said, “It’s so, it’s so—lifelike.”
Becky said, “You know what it re-
minds me of? Mary Poppins.”
They didn’t believe, or understand,
their eyes. Again, we had anticipated
this. Viki gave me a little kiss of encour-
agement, because she knew that I was
about to do something I found loath-
some and embarrassing.
I pushed off with my toes and floated
over to the aforementioned windows.
It was a clear February night. Through
the panes you saw the purposeless, dom-
inating brilliance of the skyscrapers of
New York.
When I came down, our guests were
looking at each other with horror. Becky’s
hands covered her mouth.
Viki said, “We can’t explain it, ei-
ther. We can only think that it’s con-
nected to his illness.” She said, “Are we
ready for some soup?”
The soup went down well. We
learned about Becky and Pam’s trip
to Maine, and Viki reciprocated with
an update about Molly and her ad-
ventures in kindergarten. There had
been issues with a boy named Andy,
but Andy was now socializing more
successfully.
This exchange did not involve me
speaking or being spoken to. When I
say that Pam and Becky were our dear
friends, I really mean that they were
Viki’s dear friends. They were attached
to me because I was attached to Viki.
I brought out the lentil salad. Becky
picked up her fork, then abruptly stood
up. “This is too much for me right now,”
she said. “I’m so sorry.”
As our guests made their way out,
Pam took Viki to one side and said,
“He’s going to need insurance. I’ll
e-mail you.”M
y volatility had become appar-
ent three weeks earlier. On an
errand to buy hydrogen peroxide to
clean the bathroom grout, I sprang over
a pool of melted snow—and rocketedto the far sidewalk, passing in front of
a car that was making a turn from York
Avenue. I nearly got somebody killed.
I immediately returned home, tread-
ing very slowly and very softly. After
I’d sat down for a while, trying to calm
myself, I decided to take an experimen-
tal little leap. I hit the ceiling.
The next two days I spent mostly
in bed, too consternated to move. Luck-
ily my presence was nowhere expected.
Eventually I convinced myself that
I’d experienced a powerful hallucina-
tion—a side effect of the medication I
was taking, no doubt—and I decided
to step out and complete my mission
of buying grout cleaner. To be on the
safe side, I first hopped on one foot. I
took off.
There was no way around it: I’d un-
dergone a transition, or translation. I
wasn’t dreaming—although it so hap-
pened that in my dreams I never flew.
I didn’t say anything to Viki right away.
The relevant confession took place only
the following week, after I’d spent some
time familiarizing myself with certain
parameters of my new state (getting
airborne; hovering; landing). My kind
of aerial motion felt like sideways fall-
ing: it was scary, slightly nauseating,
and unpleasant, even after I’d worked
out that, by a simple but mysterious
exercise of volition, I could adjust my
speed and elevation. It always felt un-
natural and lonely to be up in the air.
One evening, when Molly was asleep,
I overcame my dread and my shame,
and I sat Viki down and tried to relate
what had happened to me. Of course,
it took a physical demonstration to bring
the facts home to her. Language alone
could not effectively represent a state
of affairs contradicted by physics, bi-
ology, and the history of reality. Nei-
ther of us knew what to do about it, in
the sense of how to cure me. There was
no discussion of what use, if any, to
make of my new potentiality. “I think
we should talk it over with someone,”
Viki said. “Maybe Pam and Becky.” All
in all, it was extraordinary how quickly
my wife adapted. I’d say that within
ten minutes of hearing, or seeing, my
epochal news she was asking me what
else had happened that day.
“I’m finally done,” I told her, refer-
ring to a project that had been plagu-
ing me. I produced communications