comic, coming instead from the hard, true life, then the happy end vanishes out of sight almost as fast as you can say soulfully, “We’re screwed.”

At this point, any more or less able mathematician will remember the extreme cases of dangerous and unhealthy occupations such as Agent 007 or Indiana Jones. Everyone is after him, and what they want to do to the scapego — … I mean, the hero clearly interferes with the patient’s health and sleep. And the most interesting thing here is that even if you follow the Indian movie tradition of shooting away from a six-chambered gun, they shoot too — as a rule, in multishot fire mode, coming at you from every side like Black Friday shoppers.

Vampires have it easy in situations of that kind: just feast on a couple of people, wreak havoc, and fly away on the wings of night. But what is the simple Bluff supposed to do?

Strange as it may seem, this doesn’t worry him in the least — he just keeps going, safe and sound and nothing daunted, from episode to episode. Maybe just a little exhausted by yet another nymphomaniac. How does he do that? How come he’s got it made, with the likes of Halle Berry at his side while your toasts just keep landing butter side down?

That’s the way things happen in the movies, I hear you say. But someone wins the national lottery! Or becomes the president or — isn’t that scary — the president’s wife.

And if you look closely at what Bluff does in the movie, you’ll notice a characteristic detail: he’s never late, the fucker. Always just in the nick of time… As soon as the security officer looks away for a second to think about the meaning of life, Bluff shows up out of the blue and, to take advantage of the security officer’s temporary helplessness and save Bluff’s bullets for the other 149 security officers, clouts him right on the head — there you go, your soul is floating up to hea — … I mean hell, of course.

As soon as the pretty lady feels an attack of female dizziness coming on, Bluff is right there to help as if he had seen it coming all along, the bastard.

That’s just the way he is — no sooner do you stop to take a yawn than he’s there to take care of things. Even Homer sometimes nods — when the day of villainy is done, the villains need a minute’s rest, too. Bluff shamelessly takes advantage of that respite, and the next thing you know, his shameless face looks into your eyes and says insolently, “The name is Bluff. James Bluff.”

What an asshole, right?

But the most interesting thing is that he takes his one-in-a-million chance as an accuracy on par with the Swiss time-pieces and invariably moves on from episode to episode, maneuvering deftly in the machine-gun fire and sliding between the pretty legs in those rare moments when they’re loose and defenseless.

Or take Next, starring Nicolas Cage.

In that movie, Nic is able to tell the future in all of three minutes, and the spell is long enough for him to bend his head low and lift it back up as necessary.And he’s as deft maneuvering in the gunfire. When I first saw him I thought, All right, Bluff is back from another plastic surgery. You see, their tricks looked too much alike, and they contrived to knock the enemy all over the place without as much as shooting a gun.

It logically follows that if Nic doesn’t brandish a gun in Next and Bluff isn’t a frequent shooter either, then their main weapon is knowing how to be in the right place at the right time, smiling their bulletproof, white-teeth cover-boy smiles at the bullets coming their way…

Maybe that’s what gets the bullets blinded — or how else can you explain that they miss the target all the time?

To put it scientifically for all of you nerds out there, the high probability of success in a situation where the probability of survival is negligently low is guaranteed for these individuals by either congenital or acquired ability to synchronously interact with aggressive agents, thereby allowing the individuals to attain their goals and use their capabilities in the most optimal manner possible.

Anybody get that?

That’s what the distinguishing feature of stalking is — the absolute synchronization with the world and the use of power, aggression, and weapons kept to a minimum.

A poem — by Guberman, I think — comes to mind.

I had a friend who fed himself to lice

Mending his rags as old as life

Cut out Creation’s likeness nice

And hunted God… without a knife

Chapter 5. Look what the cat coughed up…

What does it mean to be in the right place at the right time?

In the nerdy parlance of overly smart mathematicians, this means having the right space and time coordinates at a given moment.

That is, F (x, y, z, t) = f (t), where f (t) is that tricky function essential to success and to the feeling of deep mental satisfaction.

Anybody get that?

To put it simply, here’s an example: Say a cat runs across the road, escaping the cars prone to hit her any second.

Three things have always amazed me:

1. As a rule, the cat runs without looking around, instead looking steadily at some point ahead.

2. But if it stops and takes a look around, the cat is bound to be run over.

3. A simple yet amazing fact: a car drives through the spot where the cat was a second ago, but the cat is already not there.

Here, the following analogies offer themselves:

1. A person crossing the road of life looks at a point ahead of them like the cat. They can only see their ultimate goal and trot toward it.

This sort of obsession is a distinguishing trait of so-called ambitious people. That is, those who achieve