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dangerous drug. Just use as directed, Mr. Zimmer, and you’ll be turned into a zombie, a being without a self, a blotted-out lump of flesh. You can fly across entire continents and oceans on this stuff, and I guarantee that you’ll never even know you’ve left the ground.
    By midafternoon the following day, I was in California. Less than twenty-four hours after that, I was walking into a private screening room at the Pacific Film Archive to watch two more Hector Mann comedies. Tango Tangle turned out to be one of his wildest, most effervescent productions; Hearth and Home was one of the most careful. I spent more than two weeks with these films, returning to the building every morning at ten sharp, and even when the place was closed (on Christmas and New Year’s Day), I went on working in my hotel, reading books and consolidating my notes in preparation for the next stage of my travels. On January 7, 1986, I swallowed some more of Dr. Singh’s magic pills and flew directly from San Francisco to London—six thousand nonstop miles on the Catatonia Express. A larger dose was required this time, but I was worried that it wouldn’t be enough, and just before I boarded the plane, I took an extra pill. I should have known better than to go against the doctor’s instructions, but the thought of waking up in the middle of the flight was so terrifying to me, I nearly put myself to sleep forever. There’s a stamp in my old passport that proves I entered Great Britain on January eighth, but I have no memory of landing, no memory of going through customs, and no memory of how I got to my hotel. I woke up in an unfamiliar bed on the morning of January ninth, and that was when my life started again. I had never lost track of myself so thoroughly.
    There were four films left— Cowpokes and Mr. Nobody in London; Jumping Jacks and The Prop Man in Paris—and I realized that this would be my only chance to see them. I could always revisit the American archives if I had to, but a return trip to the BFI and the Cinémathèque was out of the question. I had managed to get myself to Europe, but I didn’t have it in me to attempt the impossible more than once. For that reason, I wound up staying in London and Paris much longer than was necessary—almost seven weeks in all, burrowed in for half the winter like some mad, subterranean beast. I had been thorough and conscientious up to that point, but now the project was taken to a new level of intensity, a single-mindedness that verged on obsession. My outward purpose was to study and master the films of Hector Mann, but the truth was that I was teaching myself how to concentrate, training myself how to think about one thing and one thing only. It was the life of a monomaniac, but it was the only way I could live now without crumbling to pieces. When I finally returned to Washington in February, I slept off the effects of the Xanax in an airport hotel, and then, first thing the next morning, collected my car from the long-term parking lot and drove to New York. I wasn’t ready to return to Vermont. If I meant to write the book, I would need a place to hole up in, and of all the cities in the world, New York struck me as the one least likely to wear on my nerves. I spent five days looking for an apartment in Manhattan, but nothing turned up. It was the height of the Wall Street boom then, a good twenty months before the ’87 crash, and rentals and sublets were in short supply. Eventually, I drove across the bridge to Brooklyn Heights and took the first place I was shown—a one-bedroom apartment on Pierrepont Street that had just come on the market that morning. It was expensive, dingy, and awkwardly designed, but I felt lucky to have it. I bought a mattress for one room, a desk and a chair for the other, and then I moved in. The lease was good for a year. It began on March first, and that was the day I began writing the book.

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    BEFORE THE BODY , there is the face, and before the face