To him, all things are original. He invents who he is every day, they told you. “I am not the same as I was yesterday. I won’t be the same tomorrow. I won’t stay and say I’ll play for a while. It’s just not going to happen,” he told your friend last week even while he was staying until the end. “You should listen to the whole of what I’m saying,” is what your friend told you he said when she had accused him of staying and playing awhile. “Instead, you think you have to take my words and fit them into that idea you have of me,” he said to her, with a smile and an apology that he was running late and needed to go.

You were looking at him two hours ago as he was standing in the middle of the room. It was the first time you had ever seen him stand so still. You saw him taller than the others gathered around him. He didn't blend in even though you had heard it was impossible that an environment didn't suit him.

“People are my energy, and through them, catharsis. You understand, of course,” he had said to you when your friend introduced you to him. He started to turn away to another cluster of people. “I’ve got to go make connections there, I’m always seeing these connections I should be making between people.”

You tried to ask him what he meant by “connections;” you envisioned shimmering spider’s silk shooting from one of his people to another. He walked away before you could explain your chuckle. He had important connections to make, you told yourself. “Besides,” you thought, “my voice was too hard to hear over the music and who has time for metaphors on nights like this?”

You watched as he made his way through the crowded room. The red, green, and purple lights flickered across his face and sometimes highlighted his white-blonde spikes of hair while he walked and scanned the room. He had that strange way of becoming invisible to the groups of people he walked through. They separated and reformed in the same convoluted circles and semi-circles. “Yes,” you thought, “he’s just that good. He can go through them and not cause a disturbance.” He made his way to the other side of the room and disappeared into the thickening fog.

You imagined that when he walked through the room he heard nothing, saw nothing, other than what was at the top of his mental must do list. You thought you could divine his thoughts. The lights, checked; the music, checked; the DJs, checked and their addresses are stored in my palm pilot to send them their money after the show. Look at all these people, sweating, dancing, moving. Success. You imagined he would twitch his nose with a slight wrinkle and make his way for the sound board. The bass was too loud. You kept watching for him to reappear while his mystique grew larger in your mind.

He was finally out of the fog, standing behind a four foot speaker. He reached into his roomy pant pocket and pulled out a cell phone. It blinked the same colors as the lights in the room. He opened the phone and held it to his ear.

Two hours ago you were both at the party. He remembered you: “At that party the other night, right? You came with what’s his name. Rob, yeah, and wasn’t that DJ at midnight sick? How’d you like the party? Great, great. You should meet this friend of mine. I’m sure you two would hit it off. I’ll have him come introduce himself. He’s the one over there, dancing under that orange, spiraling light. See him? Great. Have fun.”

You couldn't comprehend his words quickly enough to form and spew out a response in the nanoseconds he left between questions. That didn’t matter, though, because he remembered your face and said you should hook up with that guy spinning glo-sticks under those lights. You stood in the same place and waited for the spinner to come back to meet you and make you feel at home among the two hundred at the party.

You nodded your head to the music; you wondered when that glo-stick twirling dancer would introduce himself. Eventually, you decided the raver didn’t matter. You were off to discover the secret of him, the one who was there and not there and everywhere all at the same time. If you looked for him, he would shrink into the smallest crowd. If you weren’t expecting him, there he was asking you if you were having fun.

Only an hour ago, you were standing in the balcony when you spotted him. His spiked hair sparkled purple and green. The blinking light on his cell phone gave him away even though it looked like he was hiding by the wall of speakers. You saw him talking and turning away from someone tapping him on the shoulder. “This is new,” you thought. You had been watching for him ever since he had disappeared into the fog and now there he was with his head bent toward the black wall. You found him and you were going to discover that secret of the one who was rumored to never sleep.

The bass suddenly penetrated the core of your body to the center of your rib cage and into your stomach, and you felt blown backwards against the wall of dancing, glowing ravers. The sensation distracted you and you marveled at them, at their ability to forget what was around them, and at the way they moved. They looked like mimes transposed from a pigeon infested park into the vapory world of the laser lights and glo-sticks.

Wait! You saw him shove his phone back into his pocket, look around, raise his hand in the air. Was he looking for you? You had felt like his best friend only an hour before. “He was just that good,” you thought. No, he wasn’t looking for you because someone else ran up to him. They knelt behind the speakers. He stood up wearing a black shirt instead of the radiant lime he wore earlier. He disappeared behind what you had thought was a solid wall.

You tore down the stairs to the main floor, determined not to let this one go, this intriguing one who seemed at home with hundreds of others milling about him. He was at home in your worst nightmare and you wanted to know his secret. He never did the same thing twice, you had heard. He never followed anything other than the sounds of his own worn-out beat box, they said. You sprinted outside and saw the blinking lights on his cell phone off in the other end of the parking lot. He hopped into a mini-van as you ran for your car. No one else was outside except for the few smoking by the door. You started your car, spotted his flickering blue-toned headlights in your rear-view mirror, and took off after him.

A neon blue light decorated his license plate. His van shone a violet glow on the road underneath it. He slowed at the blinking yellow light and turned a sharp left. You followed. You followed him as he made turns that led him out of the city, onto the back roads. His van spewed dark exhaust highlighted by its crimson tail lights. It was tired, you thought. The van was tired after carting the equipment everywhere, every night, every year.

It had been a half hour. It was two-thirty and you wished he would pull his car over and offer you the energy elixir his heart must pump. Then the green numbers on your dashboard blinked two-forty-five. You blinked when his brake lights momentarily brightened. “Cruise control,” you thought. His van slowed. The red from his tail lights was still the first steady light you had seen all night and it suddenly disappeared. Nothing constant.

Right blinker. Yellow. Dark. Yellow. Dark. The van stopped on the large shoulder of the road. You finally wondered if he noticed that you had been following him. He didn’t seem to care either way. His van became just a van parked on the side of the road by an old railroad crossing. He became just a man sitting inside of his car. You turned off your headlights, turned off your radio, turned up the heat in your car. It was cold. The sun had disappeared hours ago.

He opened the door and stepped out slowly. You laughed when you expected an entourage of clowns to pile out of his car. He always had his people with him. When had you seen him alone? No one followed him out the car door. You couldn’t see anyone’s silhouette in the passenger’s seat. Nothing, only him stepping out of his car and walking toward the train tracks.

So you stepped out of your car and followed him. He was walking down the railroad, hopping on the metal stakes, spinning on the rocks in between the slats of soft wood. The moon shone silver spotlights that gleamed off his leather jacket. “Always spotlights with him,” you thought.

You looked down the abandoned tracks. The moon was like the circles you tried to draw when you were younger: not quite perfect, but almost. “He probably always draws perfect circles,” you thought. “He probably dreams in circles of lights dancing across the heads of people, connecting people, creating relationships and alliances.” There he was, though, slowly walking under the same imperfect moon as you. He looked up into the sky. You looked at the pinpoints of stars and tried to guess which constellation he must be searching for.

He stopped walking. You lit your indiglo watch. It was bright green, the color of that shirt he had on earlier, you remember. It was two-fifty-five. He was sitting down and the cell phone was in his hand; red, blue, green, yellow lights spun around at the top near the antenna. You wondered where to find a phone like that.

And now he’s still sitting, looking at his phone. You walk over to him. Sit. He acknowledges you with an upward nod of his head. You both sit there, silent for a couple minutes.

“I loved her, did you know that?” he surprises you with words after he had already surprised you with his silence.

“No. I didn’t know that.” You’re talking to him! But who was she who had cornered his attention long enough to be loved? He sets his ringing cell phone down on the rail and its vibrations buzz against the metal.

“Yeah. But it didn’t work out, you know.”

“Oh. That’s too bad.”

“Yeah, no big deal anymore. I mean, I’m over that whole thing.”

“It’s good to move on,” you say.

“The biggest thing she had against me was my worst fear. I hated silence and being alone while she craved it after a while. Even now, it’s quiet, no one is around, someone else is doing my work at the party. It's weird, I feel nothing without something going on around me.” He falters. “But why am I making you listen to this?”

“Go ahead. Tell me,” you answer him. You don’t understand why he’s talking to you, who he’s talking about.

“Alright. Man, this is weird. I don’t usually talk like this, you know, but what the fuck, I might as well tell you.” He’s looking straight ahead at the trees. Their silhouettes are outlined by the bright moon. The wind is blowing through their bare branches and you pull your coat around you while you listen to him. He takes a deep breath and blows out a cloud of vapor as if it is smoke from a cigarette. “We were really close, my girlfriend and I. I met her at the first party I did. She was one of the DJ’s. And man, a chick who’s a DJ with hair that glows in the black light— She was good, too. They all loved her even though she just played that hard trance, you know?”

You nod as if you know. You want him to feel as if you understand him.

“So we dated for a few years. It was great. We hit the big parties in Chicago pretty much every weekend that I wasn’t doing one around here. She came with me to the big three day ones and we lived out of the U-Haul trailer for those. I guess all that got to be too much for her, though. I mean, sometimes she wouldn’t want to come along, which was the weirdest thing. Life is about experiencing, right? And I knew all the people who would get us into the good parties, the good clubs. I had the hook-ups, man, and I wanted to share all that with her.” He stops. You murmur a sound of interest and agreement. He continues. “About a month ago, though, she told me she had enough. She wanted us to sit at home sometimes and not even do anything. Shit, why stay home when there’s so much more to do? Even when I’m laying down in my bed I’m still thinking of everything I should do in the morning. You know, I wish there was a way to go on without sleeping. It seems such a waste of time. But anyway, she wanted me to be home more often. She used to love partying every weekend and loved fixing up my place and inviting people over and all that. It’s weird, you know.”

“So what happened?” you ask.

“She just moved out one day. I didn’t see it coming. One night I was doing a party and it was all going great. The DJ’s were awesome, the venue was tight. Everything was perfect. She even spun, which she hadn’t done for a while. But I got home around seven the next morning after cleaning up and taking care of the other DJ’s and all, and she was gone. Like that, poof, she was gone.”

“Usual Suspects,” you say. You recognize his last phrase from the movie when Verbal is talking about the elusive villain Kaiser Soze. A point of connection with him.

“What?” he asks.

“That was from the movie Usual Suspects,” you say. No response from him. “Never mind. So she was just gone like that?”

“Yeah. And I didn’t hear from her anymore. Well, she left messages at my house. She refused to call my cell phone for some reason. I was never home at the right times to catch her calls, though, and she didn’t leave her new number. It was so strange. So I haven’t heard anything from her for all this time. But tonight I get this phone call from a number I don’t recognize. Turns out it was her dad. Her dad and I had become good friends while we were dating, but I was still surprised to hear from him, you know. He told me she disappeared the day before and asked if I knew where she was. She was supposed to be at some special family gathering, I guess. But who breaks that kind of news over a cell phone? And at two a.m.? Still though, she’s gone. It’s so fucked up. But that’s why I’m here. I thought if I tried to think like her I could make some sense of this whole thing.” He shakes his head, looks up at the sky, and starts talking again but more quietly than before. You strain your ears to hear him but only catch some of the words because the wind is now ripping them away.

“…quiet and I don’t…never without people…connections, you know?…fuck, man…”

Maybe he stops talking. You don’t know, though, because he stands up and walks down the tracks. His steps are wobbling a little. You stand up as well, wipe the imaginary dirt from your pants, and begin to follow him. You slip on the rocks and almost fall face forward onto the tracks but catch yourself, kicking rocks behind you and clinking them against the metal rail. He slows for a second and turns around, sees you’re fine, and continues on.

Remember when you were younger and your favorite time of day was the late evening when your dad would take you for a walk down the train tracks? You would talk about the names of the trees, the size of the corn in the fields alongside the tracks, the unusually warm weather, and maybe if you got around to it, you’d talk about school. Remember when you used to be afraid that a train would suddenly speed down the tracks, breaking its habits of whistling and going no more than ten miles an hour, and you or your dad would be there still? Some days your imagination was stronger and more vivid and you even thought the train could fly off the tracks and charge straight at your house. Remember how you would run for your dad then? It was one of the only times you hated being alone. You couldn’t bear the thought of not having your dad there with you: what if he was walking and admiring the cloud formations and didn’t hear the train? Or what if your family was sitting at the table on Sunday morning, eating your mom’s fluffy pancakes drenched in syrup and your little sister cried too loudly and none of you heard the train coming toward the house until it was too late?

Your memories spin forward from your childhood and you suddenly fear for the man in front of you who’s walking faster than you can. He doesn’t stumble on the slippery rocks or trip on the uneven planks between the rails. This is the man who to you is untouchable, inhuman, and courageous conqueror of your strongest fear. He is never awkward and can talk to anyone he meets. People clamor to talk to him and would brag to you when they had. You admire him from afar and are ecstatic he had singled you out earlier.

You move off the tracks, onto the crisp grass. It’s better than stumbling, less painful. You finally catch up to him and he stops. He turns slowly and lifts his hands in the air.

“See that moon?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“It’s always there. Alone,” he says. He starts walking again while you are still gazing at the imperfect moon.

He stops walking again. “Look at those stars.”

You look at the stars. “They’re a lot brighter out here than in the city,” you say. You fear small talk.

“But not as bright as the moon. Even with all those stars, they couldn’t light up the night like the one moon does,” he says quietly.

Your dad said a similar thing once. You had come home from school with tears still in your voice. He asked what was wrong and you told him the kids in your class teased you again that day. They teased you because you would rather spin on the solitary tire swing or fly into the clouds on the lone swing at the edge of the playground instead of playing four-square or tag with them. You had tried to say you didn’t know how to play the game and didn’t feel like running for tag, but when you spoke, you were short of breath. You choked on your voice in the middle of a word. One of the girls heard you and imitated you the rest of the day. You hated talking to them after that. Your dad listened to what you said. He nodded and didn’t say anything for a while. Just silence. He reached his arm around your shoulders. Later that night he called you outside to see the sky. The moon was only a thin crescent but shone more clearly than anything else around it.

“See that group of stars to the right of the moon? The one that looks like a giant bear?” you dad had asked you while pointing at the sky. You swatted at a mosquito and looked where he pointed.

“No,” you answered him.

“Look for the Big Dipper, you learned about that one in school, remember?”

“Oh, I see it! Yeah! So what about the stars?”

“Well, what do you think of when you see a bear? A big, strong, scary animal, right? Well, it’s a different story up in the sky. Now look at how much sky the bear takes up,” he said.

“A lot of sky.”

“That’s right. See how much space it uses and how many stars it needs to make itself into a big bear? Now, look at the moon.”

You put your hands behind you neck to hold your head while you looked straight up at the moon.

“What do you think the difference is between the moon and the giant bear?” your dad asked.

You thought for a while. “Well it’s obvious, dad, the moon is lots brighter. Plus, it’s not made up of stars.”

“Good, good. Now, think a little more. How else is it different? You’re on the right track.”

“It’s all by itself?”

“Exactly, sweetie. You see, in the sky, the more important thing is to be bright, not to take up all the space. When the moon is gone, the stars don’t give a lot of light onto the earth, even though there are so many of them. But when the moon is in the sky, even when it’s small like it is tonight, it makes the sky lighter. The moon is able to be strong like that and it doesn’t worry about how it’s alone or not like the millions of stars around it. The moon is even more special because it doesn’t think it has to shine so brightly all by itself. It needs the sun to get its light, remember?”

You remembered and nodded.

“Do you understand what I’m trying to say, sweetie?” your dad asked. “You’ve got your thinking face on I can see.” He lovingly ran his finger across your wrinkled forehead and eyebrows that pointed inward, toward your nose. You shook your head and looked up at him.

“This one’s hard, dad. Can’t you just tell me this time? Please?”

He chuckled. “Why don’t you think about it some more tonight. If you don’t get it in the morning, I’ll explain it to you.”

You both stood still, looking up at the moon. You reached for his hand and held it. You wrinkled your face even more, squinting your eyes nearly shut and crinkling your nose as much as you could. You pulled on his hand so he would look at you and you told him that you would think extra hard about it. “See?” you had said. “I’ve got my super-duper thinking face on now.”

“I just wish the moon could be so bright by itself, without the help of the sun,” he says breaking into your reminiscing. Then he walks away. You put on your thinking face again and look at the moon. Your dad’s words come back to you. By the time morning had come, you had forgotten about the moon and the giant bear, but you felt better. Now, you ponder moon. You see a different giant bear walking down the railroad tracks.

You don’t follow him this time.

The cold wind blows at the trees and you hold your hands over your icy ears to warm them. The outlines of the trees disappear as they push the clouds in front of the moon. He’s already far enough down the tracks that you can hardly see him. No more spotlights, you think. And no secrets, no elixirs. Just a fear like your own. Your quest had been to tap into his mysteries, but all he offered was the weak shining of stars. The constellation of the bear can’t exist without its many stars, and even then, it’s not nearly as bright as the solitary moon.

It’s nearly four in the morning. He’s long gone. You had seen him still walking down the tracks when the clouds finally stopped hiding the moon. The moon still lights up the night. The metal rails shine. The railroad continues into the horizon; the two lines grow closer together until they’re no longer two but one. Their destination is a vacuum and it pulls them together into one small hole. You turn around, back to your car.