Page 124 of Without a Clue

“I know that.”

“As such, you know I firmly believe that our minds hold within them great capability to provide us with a dark or enchanted life. Not, in large part, our environments. Our brains. They can twist us up until we’re in a cage and can’t see our way out. Or they can make each day golden. The mind holds more power than our environment ever could. And the best part of all is that with great literature, we needn’t leave the comfort of our own chairs to give our brains a jump start on great adventure. But in today’s case . . .”

He takes the quarters from my hands and drops them into a machine.

“We’ll take a shortcut.”

A big yellow machine with a big yellow smiling ball staring at me.

Pac-Man.

I haven’t played this in twenty years.

The Pac-Man game begins to ask for my attention.

“Go on,” he says. “Just . . . let go.”

Faintly I tap a button to answer the machine’s question. Single player.

The game begins.

Gordon doesn’t turn his attention back to his game until I’m racing the little yellow Pac-Man around the maze and I’ve gobbled up the second red cherry. I wouldn’t say Gordon is right entirely, but there is something nice about having my attention on something else for a change.

It’s as though my brain has been running an endurance marathon and finally gets a moment to rest.

With a decrescendo and confirming beep beep notifying me that the game is over, Gordon—without looking away from his own game—refuels my machine with quarters and I keep playing.

It’s not until I’m five games in that he’s willing to talk.

“Now,” he says, giving me a brief look as his fingers play on, “I suspect it’s my turn to be interviewed.”

“That’s correct,” I say.

“And I’m . . . the last one, I hope?”

I nod.

“Well, I can tell you right now I didn’t do it.”

Maybe it’s because it’s been the longest week of my life, but I laugh. I’m getting fully delirious myself. “That’s what everyone says.”

“Is it?” he says, and raises not one but both of his bushy eyebrows over his blue eyes my way.

“Well . . . no,” I say at last.

Now that I think of it, nobody has claimed innocence, have they?

Nobody, I guess, but Nash.

“Everybody has a clear motivation, means, and method. It’s just that I assume they all would say they haven’t done it.”

“So I’m the only one who’s really laid out that I’m innocent. Interesting.” He whips the red ball around and his character spins over some kind of ogre. “So you think you know who it is?”

“I have no idea.”

I have an idea.

But I’m deathly afraid to pursue it.