In the evening he went down to the bar and got a hamburger and a beer. No one spoke to him. When he went out Josie tilted her chin at him. I’m sorry, Bobby, she said. He nodded. He walked up the street. The old paving stones wet with damp. New Orleans. November 29th 1980. He stood waiting to cross. The headlights of the car coming down the street doubled on the wet black stones. A ship’s horn in the river. The measured trip of the piledriver. He was cold standing there in the fine rain and he crossed the street and went on. When he got to the cathedral he went up the stairs and went in.

Old women lighting candles. The dead remembered here who had no other being and who would soon have none at all. His father was on Campañia Hill with Oppenheimer at Trinity. Teller. Bethe. Lawrence. Feynman. Teller was passing around suntan lotion. They stood in goggles and gloves. Like welders. Oppenheimer was a chainsmoker with a chronic cough and bad teeth. His eyes were a striking blue. He had an accent of some kind. Almost Irish. He wore good clothes but they hung on him. He weighed nothing. Groves hired him because he had seen that he could not be intimidated. That was all. A lot of very smart people thought he was possibly the smartest man God ever made. Odd chap, that God.

Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger

You know that dream of Tolstoy’s where he’s in some sort of bed contraption suspended between the abyss below and the abyss above? You know that one? Well, I gave it to him, the Lord said.

Joy Williams, “See That You Remember”