Think about home. Is home a place? No. Home is a box you fill with memories and aspirations. But it is also itself a memory, an aspiration. It’s a feeling. And feelings aren’t steady state. Feelings change. You pass through feelings. Or do feelings pass through you?

Right. But what I asked you is, when are you going home? Like, any time soon? I mean, you have a home, right?

Some people have homes. But everybody’s home has them. They carry it with them and keep it close. Home is a place in the heart.

Jesus, we’re really not going to get anywhere with this, are we? Look, we didn’t mind putting you up for a while. I gather you had sort of a rough childhood and things haven’t always— Oh God, look at this: he’s staring off into space again.

[A gauzy, honey-tinted past. Women in camisoles. A guy who is always angry for some reason. Sudden rages that explode into violence. A kid who will grow up to be a thousand per cent more handsome than his doughy teen-age features suggest. A noise that crossfades into another noise.]

Hey. I’m talking to you. You said you needed a place to crash and I was happy to help out, but it’s been six years and I really need my couch back.

Couches. A couch is a thing. But things get couched. Words, phrases, acts. They get couched in language, to obscure or deflect. You can lie on a couch. But you can also couch a lie.

Let me finish: I need my couch back. And if you’re not going to leave, then what? I mean, I don’t even know. Am I supposed to leave my own place?

You leave when I tell you to leave. Get down on the floor.

Wait. What?

A floor. A child plays. What is a child if not the embodiment of possibility? Tilt your head and that floor becomes a wall. Stand on your head and it becomes a ceiling. Every floor contains within it the possibility of every ceiling, without limits or preconceptions, whether it is tiled or carpeted. Monsanto.

O.K., I literally have no idea what you just said. Doesn’t matter. You gotta go. Or do I call the cops?

I’m driving.

…what?

A night-black thruway. The headlamps of oncoming traffic cast bars of light across my eyes. WABC is playing on the radio, a soundtrack to a world that is approaching more quickly than I can grasp, a world that threatens to obliterate my own. The pattern of light on the planes of my cheeks shifts subtly. I glance in the rearview to see the cherry top of a New York State Police cruiser.

Stop it. Stop it.

Feelings change. You pass through feelings. Or do feelings pass through you?

You said that already.

I’m time-jumping.

All right, here’s your hat. There’s the door.

A man opens a door. A door isn’t a home. But you can’t have a home without a door. Where would you hang your Christmas wreath? Christmas…

No, no. Nonononono. Time’s up, Drunky. You’re going now.

Or am I staying then? Is time up, or down, or is it somehow both at once? People say life is a circle. Life isn’t a circle. It’s a double helix. It loops back on itself and the future becomes the past, because when everything is possible no one is free.… Chevy?

Yeah, I took that intro to philosophy class in college, too. The difference is, I don’t bother people with it. Goodbye.

I’m turning in the doorway. I’m gazing back into the room. But am I seeing you or some vision of—

[Slams door.] I thought he’d never leave. Who’s next?

Well, we’ve still got Tyrion Lannister in the attic.

O.K. Give him another year, but that’s it.

Photograph: AMC.