He felt weak, but there was no way Nora could see that. And the fact that Nora couldn't see it made Danny start to feel after a minute or two like he wasn't totally weak, and after another minute or two, feeling not totally weak started to make him feel stronger. I'm saying minutes, but it wasn't minutes, it was seconds. Maybe just once second. Short enough that all Danny noticed was that suddenly he felt a bit better.

Conversation, banter, whatever you wanted to call this thing he was doing with Nora -- to Danny it was like an IV dose of joy. He felt linked to her which made his problems seem like Nora's problems too, which meant if she wasn't freaking out about the fact that his satellite dish had just sunk into a pool full of rotten water, then maybe it wasn't such a big deal. Maybe it hadn't even happened at all. Danny didn't think this all out, he just felt better, so if he'd already reached a level of happiness, now he jumped up to level three. And because he'd recently felt bad --like shit, actually-- going from level-one to level-three happiness was like riding in one of those elevators that skips a lot of floors on its way to the top and makes your stomach flop against your lungs.

Within about five minutes of Nora going, the sun went, too. It dropped behind the trees and the second it did the pool and everything around it went dim. The change was huge, like an eclipse. And it wasn't just the light that changed, it was the mood; the mood went gloomy.
The jet lag was hitting him hard, or that was how Danny thought of it. But it wasn't just the jet lag, it was the fact that in the last half hour he'd lost:
1. His satellite dish
2. His girlfriend
3. His link to anyone outside this castle
4. His level-three happiness
5. His connection to Nora
6. The chance of ever possibly being at home in this weird place
7. His credit
8. The sun
All of which made Danny fell like his legs had been cut off, to the point where he didn't even have the juice to sit on a bench with no back, or to sit period. He lay belly-down in the marble, head in his arms, and looked at the water.

It always amazed Danny how much sleep deprivation was like being high, with the one big difference that being tired was never fun. Danny felt like shit: loose in the knees, sweaty, but also cold. And something else, too: prickling. On his arms, the back of his neck, all the way over his scalp so he felt the hair lift up from his head. On the streets of New York, this prickling would make Danny perch on a stoop or lean against a wall and open up his laptop, because nine out of ten times --no, nineteen out of twenty, ninety-nine out of a hundred-- wireless internet service was what he was picking up. It was an awareness in the air, a possibility. Danny felt this now. Very carefully, not wanting to disturb it or move out of range, he took the phone out of his pocket. He dialed Martha's number with some words in his head that were like praying. Danny felt the world out there like one of those phantom limbs -- it tingled, it itched, it hurt to be reattached to him. But the phone just searched. It search and searched and Danny waited, thinking (praying) that maybe all that searching would lead to something, a gap in this blankness. He waited, watching the hone, until his hope dried up. The loss hit Danny all over again, except this time without the release of yelling or kicking -- just that feeling of wanting something so badly you can't believe the force of your wanting it won't make it be there, won't make it come back.

3/17/09 note that there are a lot of short posts here re THE KEEP (look at month archive to see all, I suppose) & this was before blogger labels, so I've just added book haphazardly to a few of these posts...
"funny Danny who needs *needs* that connection to elsewhere through the phone lines."