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pillow and pulled it out and set it gently into place. Now that it could breathe, the bear seemed to smile at him. A photograph on the nightstand caught his eye. It was of Chase as a small child, wearing a little plaid jumper. Perhaps it had been taken on her first day of school. She had chubby thighs, a barrette in her hair. She was not smiling. The photograph made him feel sad. For a moment, he considered lying down on her bed. He thought of closing the door and staying in her room and never coming out, but of course that wasn’t realistic.
    Instead, he packed a small bag for her, gently tugging open her drawers, selecting items that she might choose for a short trip including a variety of strappy undergarments that made his fingertips burn. In the bathroom, Hugh selected the toiletries that looked used—a bar of black soap that resembled a cube of tarmac, a toothbrush with its crusty handle, a finger-poked jar of moisture cream, and a slimy tube of makeup. When he was through, he brought the bag to the door and set it down, alongside her pocketbook.
    There were voices outside. Hugh could see the neighbor and his friends walking toward his garage. The neighbor had slicked-back hair. He was wearing a suit. The women were in dresses. They were laughing. They were laughing and laughing. What could possibly be that funny? he wondered. Hugh watched as they disappeared inside the garage. A moment later, the car backed down the driveway. The afternoon sunlight flashed off the car like a staccato melody. For a moment he stood there watching the neighbor’s house. The window shades were pulled. The house seemed indifferent, mute.
    He sat down in the chair. He looked at the woman on the couch, who was suddenly a stranger to him. It made him think about life and death. How they said your spirit left you when you died and people could tell the difference when they looked at a dead body. He’d once seen a dead body in the subway and, thinking about it now, he would have to agree—the body did look different. Hedda Chase was alive, but looked dead, and that was worse somehow, it was much worse.
    It was a drowsy time of day. In places like Spain people took naps at this hour, but not here in America. People worked. They worked around the clock. If he was at work right now he’d be drifting over his desk, trying to keep his eyes open. There were sheets and ledgers and lists and statistics. Numbers, a language of abstraction that made perfect sense. There was the muffled sound of progress.
    The house was not quiet. There was the whir of the refrigerator, the dripping faucet, the pulsing radio of a passing car. Time passed, an hour, maybe two, and the house began to fill with shadows. He felt a little better, pretending not to be there, pretending that it was an empty house with nobody home.
    Hugh took the airport exit off the freeway. The car was an older model with leather seats and a wood steering wheel. It didn’t have the usual conveniences of a modern car. There was no latch to open the trunk from the inside, for example, you had to get out of the car in order to open it, and it had a separate key. The keys were attached to a rabbit’s foot. Hugh fondled the bony tendons with his fingertips. The car had the smell of old leather which he rather liked, but it didn’t handle as well as the car he had rented, a cheap American economy car, but then this car was old and most old things didn’t handle the way you wanted them to. He went through the long-term parking gate, passing the lighted gatehouses with their sleepy, change-making clerks, and found a spot under one of the streetlamps. People generally tried to park near the lights, thinking it kept their cars safer. For his purposes, it would illuminate the interior of the car. He cut the engine and got out, leaving the keys in the ignition. The night air was cool and he pulled on his sport jacket. There were a few people getting out of a car down the row, laughing over some