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Show 42 up she was no longer holding the bat and was walking around in a circle stamping her feet, and the girl on third base was jumping up and down and waving her arms. There was no point in even trying. He recapped his pen, put it in his shirt pocket, closed his sketchbook, and stood up. He thought about throwing the used milkshake away, but it wasn't his, so he left it and started to walk toward the street on the east side of the park, where he had left his car. He had not gone more than a few steps before he knew something was wrong. He seemed not to have any connection with his feet. His steps veered left when he had not intended to go left, and then right when he attempted to straighten his direction. He stopped near a green wooden table splattered with birdlime and listened to the inside of his head. He could not identify it precisely, but something in his brain was running faster, and if he kept walking it would run out of control. He looked through the trees at the row of houses across the street and saw a giraffe straddling two roofs, its head buried down a brick chimney. The sound of rushing feet on the grass behind him swept past him on both sides. He pressed his fingers to his forehead and took two or three careful steps toward the sidewalk. Two elderly women, one of them pushing a shopping cart, were proceeding slowly and painfully south from the corner. He looked away just as they fell over the edge where the sidewalk and street suddenly broke open, the two halves collapsing into a gulf. A man on a distant roof was riding a bicycle backward. Lorin reached the sidewalk, his legs feeling as though bags of sand had been tied to them. He was bent nearly double, and was conscious of bottle caps and heel prints in the torn grass, and flattened soda straws, and cigarette ends and countless red ants. Then, just as suddenly, he felt better. The blunted ache in his arms was gone, his brain had spun |