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    I pointed at it. “Where’d you get that?” I asked.
    He pointed at a pile of them sitting on another table.
    Right. He would victimize me with facts, fail to elaborate, force me to excavate an ultra-specific set of questions to which he would then show his dumb, blank face. Quiet uncertainty is perhaps the most medicinal mode. I was not going to like this new form of speech.
    He pushed a pamphlet at me. “You might want to look at these protocols. Some things to keep in mind when you speak, if you really must speak. You’ve mentioned yourself a few times, and it’s probably worth avoiding. It’s not personal. Or I guess actually that it is. It’s really personal. It’s just that the studies are pretty conclusive about this stuff.”
    “The studies?” I asked. “Is that what you’ve been doing here?”
    A low growl issued from one of the crates, triggering a chorus of animal cries throughout the lobby.
    “Or talk all you want,” he said, bored. “But do it somewhere else.”
    His smile had a little bit of clear shit in it. I could smell it.
    I took the pamphlet, stared at it without focus. The text was slightly
darker than the white paper it was printed on. My hands were unsteady and the text wobbled, as if it hadn’t been fastened to the paper. I felt sick, a tightness in my chest.
    “It only seems harder to read,” he smirked. “It’s much, much easier on the ... you know,” and he tapped his head. “We’re probably going to see a lot more of that soon.”
    I pictured seeing more of something you could hardly see to begin with. That great unused resource, the invisible air. We’d fill it with text, the nearly translucent kind. That would solve everything.
    “Sorry to run but you’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “We’re closing up. This Forsythe is probably not going to meet again. Maybe that guy you’re looking for, Murray? Maybe he’s in Rochester?”
    Murray of Rochester. In my mind I hacked at him with a long knife.
    It was dark outside and the Oliver’s staff had finished loading their vans. They drifted out of the lobby into the parking lot. I guess they would go home and pack now, maybe get an early start and hit the road later tonight, before the sun came up. Beat the traffic.
    It’s hard to describe people who are silent as a matter of life and death, who move through the world in fear of speech. You can hear the swishing of their limbs, the music of their breath. None of them spoke.