”’[…] and then, stopping for a moment as Arp lifted his leg, something caught my eye. A glow on the sidewalk, a burst of brightness blinking our from the shadows. It had a bluish tint to it — rich blue, the blue of F.’s eyes. I crouched down to have a better look and saw that it was a stone ,perhaps a jewel of some kind. A moonstone, I thought, or a sapphire, or maybe just a piece of cut glass. Small enough for a ring, or else a pendant that had fallen off a necklace or bracelet, a lost earring. […] So I started to pick it up, but the moment my fingers came into contact with the stone, I discovered that it wasn’t what I’d thought it was. It was soft and broke apart when I touched it, disintegrating into a wet, slithery ooze. The thing I had taken for a stone was a gob of human spit. Someone had walked by, had emptied his mouth onto the sidewalk, and the saliva had gathered into a ball, a smooth, multifaceted sphere of bubbles. With the light shining through it, and with the reflections of the light turning it that lustrous shade of blue, it had looked like a hard and solid object. The moment I realized my mistake my hand shot back as if I had been burned. I felt sickened, overwhelmed by disgust. […] I took out my handkerchief and wiped off my fingers as best I could. When I was finished, I couldn’t bring myself to put the handkerchief back in my pocket. Carrying it at arm’s length, I walked to the end of the street and dropped it into the first garbage can I saw.’

[…He] had already seen that stone, and he knew that it didn’t exist, that the life they were about to build for themselves was founded on an illusion.”