This page resonated with some readers while being word salad to others. Let’s see if I can break it down. Will is talking about how his relationships have failed. His therapist asks, somewhat rhetorically, if failure itself is the pattern Will is trying to correct. But Will now understands that he’s caused and experienced the most pain by denying the failure. He can’t bear to turn the person he’s loved into a stranger. So he lets his mind wander somewhere else, somewhere it wants to go, while pretending to still be present in that failed relationship. It’s an alienated state – the body brooding and restless, the mind grasping.

As to Eve’s journey, she is in Union Square under a looming installation known as Metronome (also the title of this chapter). At night the park is often roped off and pitch black – a rare and eerie place to feel alone. As the name implies, Metronome is a clock, measuring the time until midnight. Though it once felt infinite, Eve and Will can only ignore it for so long. They are repeating patterns, nursing unresolved injuries, searching for something unknown, all at the expense of time. This is a theme I’ll touch on a few more times before OP ends. Time is indifferent to their plight, it’s just happening, whether they’re ready for it or not.