Summary
The seventh chapter of the book describes a day in the life of Lou's daughter Roxy Kline, a recovering heroin addict who lives in San Francisco. The book immediately informs the reader that, in a few months, she will die of an overdose. However, on this particular day, she is happy, as she has just purchased a Mandala Consciousness Cube. She plans to upload her memories in order to relive her trip to London with her father. Early in the day, she attends a game of Dungeons and Dragons at her treatment center. The game is run by Chris Salazar and Molly Cooke, who recently suffered the loss of their friend Colin. They are both employees of Mondrian, who runs these games.
Roxy does not tell Chris about the cube, as he thinks what Mandala and its "counters" do is deeply unethical. Roxy does not participate in the game, but only watches. She notices that many players choose qualities to play as characters that are their complete opposites; she describes a muscular, tattooed man who plays as a female elf. The game concludes and Roxy prepares to leave. She notices that the work Chris is doing is likely a cover for something else, as she often overhears him having cryptic phone conversations. She uses Dungeons and Dragons terminology to describe her perception of this, calling it her "sense subterfuge," the ability to perceive the double purpose of places and people. She makes the same observation about many of the nearby restaurants and shops, noting that many of them sell drugs.
She goes across the street to a lunch counter, where she runs into Molly. She is initially irritated about having to talk to her, but softens a bit after a nice conversation about Molly's childhood friendship with Chris. She then picks up heroin from a busboy. She justifies the purchase to herself by saying she needs it in case she cannot remain still for the upload process. She imagines the different parts of her life as being on separate sheets of graph paper, like the ones used in the Dungeons and Dragons games.
She comes home and discovers that her neighbor has kindly brought her package to her door. She begins the upload and reexperiences the best moment of the trip: their last day in London. She recalls a celebratory meal, after which she and her father went for a walk with the manager of a band he had just signed. They talked late into the evening and she felt closer than she ever had before with him. After, on the plane ride home, she asked to move in with him and he said no, making it clear to her that the moment had passed. After the process is complete, she is excited about the present and the potential for a better future, as the offloading of her memories makes her feel as though new things are possible. She imagines going to Dungeons and Dragons games and asking for help building a character, finally choosing to participate.
In the eighth chapter, the reader follows Chris Salazar through a day at his job. He works for a small startup in San Francisco, called SweetSpot, where he breaks story beats into "stockblocks," imagining different variations on scenes using algebra. He has recently gone through a breakup with his girlfriend, Pamela, after she overdosed on heroin and nearly died. He reflects on the fact that he has primarily played a supporting role in other people's lives, never getting to be the "main character." After completing some work, he stands with some smokers outside and talks to his friend Comstock, who offers him a ride on the back of his motorcycle. Initially excited, Chris' feelings quickly turn anxious when he realizes they are heading to the airport.
At the airport, they pick up Comstock's girlfriend and tell Chris to take a cab with her suitcase, as the motorcycle cannot fit everyone and everything. Chris nervously follows them in the cab, but the driver tells Chris that his car cannot keep up with the motorcycle. After Comstock makes a surprising turn and the cab driver grows increasingly hostile, Chris is left by the side of the road with the suitcase. He walks to his grandmother's home nearby and shares a meal with her and his cousin Gabby, who dislikes him. His grandmother owns a Mondrian painting which she chooses not to insure, preferring to camouflage it with numerous other Mondrian knick-knacks, assuming that any would-be thief would assume the painting could not really be owned by someone who had so much kitsch. They have a nice conversation which is pointedly interrupted by Gabby saying the suitcase smells strange. Not wanting to expose its contents, Chris says he will leave and returns to the office.
At his building, he is unable to reenter the building, as the security guards wants him to open the suitcase so they can inspect it. Deeply frustrated, he sits on the curb, waiting for Comstock to return. He imagines the different twists and turns of his predicament as a series of story scenes, shifting genres as his situation grows increasingly difficult. Exhausted, he moves to the alley across the street, frequented by heroin addicts, sits against the wall and begins to doze off. He looks up at the sky and feels a momentary sense of peace.
Analysis
Roxy displays a similar kind of fixation on the past as the other characters. But she differs from the others by constantly wondering "what if" something had been slightly different in a way that would have changed the overall outcome of a situation. For instance, she thinks about how different things might have been for her in school if she had been born later, as being dyslexic in 1968 was much worse than it would have been in 1998. This focus on the past is what leads her to buy a Mandala Consciousness Cube, as she wants to relive her trip to London with her father. On that trip, she experienced a fleeting instance of closeness with him, one that was abruptly cut off when he said she couldn't move to LA to be with him. As her chapter shows, this desire to ruminate on a particular moment in time ultimately hinders her ability to imagine a better, brighter future.
The game Dungeons and Dragons also plays an important role in Roxy's chapter as she considers how the game reflects different elements of real life. First, she notices that players often choose to be characters who are their opposites. For herself, if she were to play, she thinks, she would choose to be herself, but younger, as she was once fearless and bold, qualities which have been eroded by addiction, time, and hardship. Similarly, she notices how being an addict has given her a "subterfuge sense," as she perceives the doubled identities of different places and people. She notices that a flower shop is also a lookout for an OxyContin dealer. She also notices that Chris's work appears to be more complex than just hosting the games, as she overhears strange phone conversations he has after the sessions. For Roxy, the game's fantastical qualities do not diminish its ability to capture real life.
Another major theme in this section is addiction. Towards the end of the chapter, Roxy thinks about the fact that her heroin addiction ultimately consumed every other part of her life: her romantic relationships, dreams of becoming an actor or dancer, beauty, and physical health. She squarely examines the fact that addiction inevitably takes away everything from the individual suffering through it, as they cannot maintain the other aspects of their existence. For Roxy, her struggles with addiction are a kind of black hole from which nothing escapes. This is particularly true given the fact that the reader learns that she ultimately succumbs to her struggle, dying of an overdose a few months later.
Storytelling features prominently in Chris's chapter as his job is to break down different story beats using algebra. His analytical view of scenes seems to suggest that it is difficult to find new stories, as there are so many predictable ways for a story to progress. As his own adventure unfolds, he continues to think in this way, imagining how the moments he is experiencing (riding on Comstock's motorcycle, having dinner at his grandmother's house) fit into various genres and fulfill story expectations. While he finds his situation frustrating, and increasingly alarming, he finds that almost all of it is predictable.
At the same time, a great deal of his frustration stems from the fact that he is never, as his chapter title states, the "protagonist," but instead is forced to occupy the supporting role. He feels this about his friendship with Colin, as well as his ex-girlfriend Pamela, as he tried to help them in their struggles with heroin addiction. Similarly, he feels that he is forced into a supporting role in the suitcase drama that unfolds with Comstock and his girlfriend, as they thoughtlessly assumed he would take care of her suitcase without complaint. Chris's struggle throughout the chapter, which he appears to resolve at the end, is to actually see himself as the main character in his life, not someone who is, by nature, required to take on the problems of others.
