The Keep

Danny was thinking a few things:
1. That Howard was starting to sound a little nuts. Lots of powerful people were nuts, Danny wasn't sure why. But was Ann nuts? And what about Mick? Could they all be nuts?
2. That this hotel sounded like the closest thing to hell Danny could imagine.
3. That he needed to set up his satellite dish.


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.

....

Danny felt like shit. In fact he felt shitty in so many different ways that saying he had a headache or he had a stomachache would be wrong, because it would give the idea that the shitty feeling came only from his head or his stomach when actually it came from every part of him at once. Every part of him hurt or felt bad in whatever way it could, to the point where he couldn't do what he normally would do within ten seconds of waking up naked in an unknown bed n an unknown room (and it had happened to Danny before, more than once): get the fuck up. He felt too shitty to get up.

Danny washed his hands and his head in the sink, where the water was one or two degrees warmer than ice, and that made him feel the best he'd felt so far that morning, meaning toward the upper spectrum of very very very bad, so he went ahead and splashed his whole naked body until he was shivering on top of the shaking.
When he came back out, limping on his damaged knee, Danny spotted his pants dangling over the side of an old Chinese screen. They looked like they'd been thrown there, which made Danny actually say out loud, Don't think about it, meaning the exact scene or moment that had sent his pants flying six or seven feet in the air. Don't think about it. Just get the pants on. Danny tugged them over his wet legs He found his shit and jacket and underwear and socks in different parts of the same general area -- all thrown, it seemed. Don't think about it.
Within minutes Danny was dressed except for his boots. He couldn't find them around the bed, and when he moved beyond it, looking under furniture, thinking maybe the boots had gotten shoved or rolled or thrown (don't think about it), he found nothing but dustballs the size of grapefruits. The more he looked, the more his heart clenched up. These were Danny's lucky boots, the only boots he owned, although he'd shelled out enough repairing and resoling them over the years to buy five or six new pairs, easy. He'd bought the boots right after he got to New York, when he'd just figured out who he was not (Danny King, suchagoodboy) and was burning up with excitement to find out who he was instead. The store had a big rubbery dance beat coming over the sound system, a beat Danny had been listening to ever since, for eighteen years, in stores, clubs, restaurants -- he barely noticed it now. But that day in the shoestore, Danny felt like he'd stumbled upon the world's secret pulse. Danny gritted his teeth from excitement. He thought: I'm a guy who wears boots like this. It was the first thing he knew about himself.

...

The fact that his cousin hadn't already guessed about the baroness and Danny made him realize that he wouldn't guess; it would never cross his mind. And being one foot away from someone who couldn't imagine such a thing as Danny fucking the baroness made Danny feel like maybe he really hadn't done it.