The next few days Pete moved in a haze. Everything was unreal; everything had a dream quality. He wandered about aimlessly in the mornings or dropped into the library to do some reading. Afternoons and evenings he spent at his window, collecting tickets. The faces were white blobs, he never saw any of them clearly. After work he would wander some more, only half-aware of where he went or why. It could not go on this way, and he knew it. Something would happen, something had to happen. Meanwhile he lived in a world where nothing mattered but the tickets he collected and the food he ate.
Once he thought he’d been seen by a White Sands neighbor, and he lost himself in the Midway crowd. It could have been his imagination it probably was, but such a discovery was bound to come sooner or later.
