His trainer, Stueben, is here. He has a young woman here, too. They are all “all dressed up.”

A car pulls around. There is room for the four of us. Stueben has a flask.

I am handed the flask. It is fruit juice.

The young woman has black hair. It is a wig. She adjusts it. I drink.

“That stuff takes half an hour to hit you,” says Stueben. “We’ll be there by then.”

In half an hour, we’re there. It is late, and my brain is beginning to doubt itself. There is a star on the building. We enter.

Wayne has not said a word to me since I arrived and he said we were going somewhere and that I will want to write about it. “You’ll write about this in your magazine and I’ll deny it all,” he said. And then, silence for the rest of the night.

We’re handed robes at the door. Hoods on the robes. I’m told to put up the hood. I do so.

A room filled with people. I am asked to put away my notebook by a bald man with many rings. He looks into my eyes and begins to spin and go upside-down somehow. “Aleppe!” he says. Everyone shouts “Aleppe!” back.

It’s a day later and my mind is coming back from wherever it has been. Wayne’s people will not return my calls. I find Stueben on the sidewalk outside his office building—at the Sunshine Skyrise—and when I talk to him, he grabs my arm. He pulls my wrist up and shows it to me. A long cut. “This will keep you quiet,” he says.

I search my memory to see if I can find the building where we went, but it’s gone. I can’t find my way back.

There are 6 varieties of apple in the pie, they say.

You have to have cheddar on the apple pie. If you don’t order with the cheddar, they won’t give it to you. They ask you to leave. You are told never to come back. It seems too serious for pie.

The owner of the place tells me he won’t talk about “The War.” I say I didn’t ask about “The War.” He nods.

I don’t know which war he means, but I can’t ask him. And there are so many wars to choose from. It could be any one of them. It could be one that only he knows about.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” he says to me.

“No matter how hard I work?” I ask. “I’m doomed to failure?”

“No,” he says. “You misunderstand. You aren’t going anywhere physically is what I mean.”

He says that the universe has single fixed point in it and I am that single fixed point. The planet rotates, the planet orbits the sun, the sun and the solar system move in the galaxy, the galaxy moves in the universe—all of it moves but me. When I walk from my door to the street, the universe turns and moves to compensate. When I fly to Iowa to see my mother, the universe turns a to compensate. I never move.

“How is that my fortune?” I ask.

“Well, it seems pretty fortunate, anyway,” the guy responds.

Being famous is a problem for those who stop being famous. Or stop being as famous. People who are known for youth and vitality and get old and no longer have youth and vitality confuse the public who only venerated them for their youth and vitality. “I like this person for the way he has ‘youth’ and ‘vitality’ and now he has none but I think I want to like him because I used to. I don’t know how to reconcile these things.” Lacking youth and vitality, the famous find that the attention of the public strays. It wanders to someone else with youth and vitality. Famous people, though, get used to the attention that is paid to them. “Getting used” to something alters your brain. Alcohol changes your brain temporarily. Long-term use of alcohol alters your brain permanently. Drugs do the same thing. Temporary at first, and then permanent with habitual use. An altered brain craves the thing that alters it. This is addiction. Attention alters the brain. The famous are addicted to attention. And, unfortunately, any kind of attention. The famous, when we are not paying attention, withdraw. Their brains need the attention because they have been altered to need it. It’s our fault. It’s their fault. It’s nobody’s fault. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Famous people who do not have attention sometimes act out to get attention. They are addicted and desperate. We shouldn’t be angry. It’s a disease. But any sort of attention will do. We need to give them the gaze they need. They are only human. We need to help the humans.

We build a zoo. Famous people who outlive their fame can live in the zoo. They can continue to live in public and continue getting the attention that their altered brains need. And we can keep them from acting out in destructive ways. It’s a kindness to imprison those with dwindling fame in a zoo.