Paranoid yet judiciously reasonable, innocent yet calculating, strange yet strangely endearing, Emmet Barfield finds the world around him looming larger and larger the more he struggles to make his way within it. With Emmet as our guide, Force of Gravity transforms the world through a solitary consciousness until the reader's perceptions become as inverted as if seen through a modern version of Alice's looking glass. Emmet's world is a place where shopping in a market requires the cunning of a carefully considered crime, where a bustling city street in summer appears as desolate as a forgotten wasteland, where a stray cat adopted for company becomes as menacing as one's darkest foe, and where a mother and son riding a ski lift suddenly find themselves dizzy with the threat of death. Through his eyes, the world becomes newly alive with the terrible vividness and weird beauty of an undiscovered territory.

Introduction

xi

Francine Prose

Shelter

1

(144)

Hospital

145

(108)

Carnival

253

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Force of Gravity
A Novel

Chapter One

"I am getting small," Emmet noted with pleasure as he reached for the keys to his apartment.

The pocket of his jeans was so roomy, he could rotate his hand a full circle within the lining.

"It's big as a muff," he marveled as he pulled out the keys.

The pressure of his hand caused his pants to dip over his cheeks. Emmet made a mental note to buy a new belt so that he could cinch his clothes more snugly against his waist. He slipped his hand under his shirt and petted the taut skin.

As he turned away from the door to the street, the sun blinded him. It had become his habit to keep his apartment dark even in the day: partly to cool it against the summer heat, partly to shadow the walls so that they gleamed less brightly once he was locked inside. For an instant, the light made his neighborhood thin and black as an X-ray transparency. He blinked patiently until the shapes reassembled.

Emmet paused for a moment at the bottom of the stoop. He zipped his jacket so that the metal hook pinched his neck. The cloth draped loosely over his back. When he hunched his shoulders, the sleeves fluttered like wings.

"Smaller every day," he thought, happily.

Emmet looked both ways before he stepped onto the sidewalk. In the morning, there were never many people about, but he wanted to be certain that a neighbor did not loiter outside to follow his movements. He wanted to be certain his landlord was not watching from behind a bush in the next yard. When he saw that the way was clear, he adjusted his sunglasses over his eyes and settled into the sea-green haze.

Already the cloth of his T-shirt grew damp with sweat. It stuck under his armpit to the blue flannel shirt he wore layered over it.

"Imagine that it is cold. Imagine that it is winter and you are shivering helplessly," he told himself as he turned the corner to hall a cab. With each step, sweat leaked from the pores. Puddles collected in the seat of his pants so that his jeans grew heavy and thick.

"Harder," he said aloud and clenched his teeth. "Imagine skiing on a glacier with no coat. Imagine sleeping naked in six feet of drifts."

In his mind, Emmet saw a mountain slope packed with skiers. He blinked once to narrow his range of vision. Up close, he saw a face ruddy with frost. He held the image in his mind while he shuddered as if overcome by a chill. "Come on," he said. "Cold. Cold. White. White."

The face froze before him. Below it, the wings of a blue nylon collar flapped against its whiskers. He could hear the clatter of skis as they edged across the moguls at the bottom of the slope, the shoosh of speed as the ice propelled the skier against the wind. Emmet urged himself on as if he were racing. "Cold, cold, cold," he repeated, until he became dizzy from the steady beat of perspiration dripping from his brow.

He kicked the metal rail that ran along the steps to his house. "The least you can do is make your body feel cold," he berated himself as he recalled the many miracles he had heard.

Emmet had read about people who levitated themselves at will or slept dreamlessly on beds of broken glass or swallowed steel swords as effortlessly as water. Some had made tumors shrink inside their bodies by picturing beams of light attacking the lump of cells. He wanted to believe he could train his mind so that he could wield it against his body, even teach himself to defy the natural elements, if he concentrated resolutely. None of it had worked. Day after day, his brain failed him.

Before he reached the end of his block, Emmet felt thirsty. His clothes drooped over his body as if he had soaked them in the bath before stepping outside. "Imagine it is silk," he thought halfheartedly, but already the heat weighed upon him too miserably to imagine himself another way. He checked his watch to see if he had time to slip into the delicatessen on the corner for something to drink.

For the past month, all Emmet had wanted was carbonated water. He had got it into his head that the water would cleanse him. As he swallowed, he imagined each bubble scrubbing against his soul. He traced its path as it caught in his throat and abraded his lungs. If he had not eaten, he could feel it drop coolly into his stomach before it disappeared. With time, he wanted to sense it pop all the way down to his toes. He hoped that if he drank enough, and only that type of water, he might become pure.

His dog still required food. He was trying to change her. He offered her carbonated water from a bowl set neatly on a mat on the floor. At first, she crinkled her nose at the bubbles, as if they were made of pepper instead of air; but she grew used to them when she realized it was all she was going to get to drink. When she begged Emmet to feed her, he covered his face with a surgical mask so that he did not smell the fumes.

He never felt hungry. At home, he ate nothing but carrots. He spent hours whittling their skins with a knife so that nothing remained but the unblemished, orange flesh. Sometimes he ate them chopped into one-inch pieces. Sometimes he pulped them in his juicer and drank them like soup from a bowl. Sometimes he served them long and sliced on a platter. Sometimes he shaved them into mounds and shook them onto his dish like strands of hair.

Emmet always set a fork and a spoon next to his plate. He folded a napkin in a rectangle ...

Excerpted from Force of Gravity: A Novel by R. S. Jones
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