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one should have been awake. He stood very still, and the sound returned, muffled and distant. It was dark inside the apartment, but Darius could have walked the rooms blindfolded. He slipped his shoes off silently, holding back the handle as he shut the front door. He eased the dead bolt through, making sure it didn’t scrape. He knew the loosest floorboards, knew where the kids liked to drop their shoes and bags. He’d come to appreciate this one bit of sloppiness their mother allowed. When he went days without seeing them, he had only the kids’ clutter to remember them by.
    Down at the end of the hall, a pale, bluish light flickered in the weave of the carpet under Shawn’s door. One hand on the knob for balance, Darius put his head to the hollow wood. There was laughter, a smattering of applause.
    Shawn lay in basketball shorts and an undershirt, warmed by the glow of the TV. The rest of the bed was blanketed in video gamecases and plastic cups. As Darius pushed the door open further, Shawn rolled over, wrapping his arms more tightly around the pillow. He was twelve, and soon he would be bigger than his father.
    Darius turned off the set, and he stood there for a moment, waiting. But Shawn didn’t awaken.
    Outside his daughter’s room, Darius paused, but here there was only silence. Nina was sixteen now, her door gummy with the white papery residue of stickers, the faces peeled. She was erasing every trace she could of childish things.
    In the bedroom at the other end of the hall, Sylvia lay on her stomach, one arm outstretched onto his side of the bed. He closed the door behind him, and the heavy curtains blocked out every last bit of light. Darius forgot himself for a moment as he undid his pants, allowing his buckle to swing into the side of the dresser with a clatter.
    Sylvia didn’t stir.
    He lifted her arm to make room for himself. She let him reposition it without protest. When he kissed her between the shoulder blades, she remained perfectly still.
    When he awoke, she would be gone.
    §
    Darius accepted her body as he would a blanket, as another component of a dream. Not knowing what he felt, he felt her slide in next to him, hot against the cool sheets. Eyes fluttering back to sleep, he was vaguely aware of fingers folding around his shoulder and breath upon his neck. He might have slept through that too, were it not for her perfume, which smelled of gasoline and dried flowers and made him gasp for air.
    “Isn’t it about time for you to get up?” a voice said. He couldn’t be sure the voice wasn’t his own. The words repeated in his head. Isn’t it? Isn’t it? Time? they insisted. The twitching lids of his eyes shot open. There were red lines on the clock, and at first he had no idea what they meant. As he watched the lines change, assembling themselvesin a different order, he failed to make note of the body next to him. Finally the lines settled themselves into something he knew as numbers.
    It was only 12:46 in the afternoon. Not yet time to get up. Fourteen minutes. Fourteen precious minutes remained. Darius rolled onto his back with a sigh. Then he saw Violet lying next to him, perched on one elbow. She was silent and smiling. He sprang up against the headboard, dragging the blanket with him.
    Violet ran her fingers over the strip of his bare chest not covered by the blanket.
    “You’re not happy to see me?” She’d learned to pout even while smiling. Her nails flickered with a fresh coat of polish, her favorite ruby red.
    “How’d you get in here?” He pulled the blanket up the rest of the way.
    Violet removed all but her index finger from a swirl of chest hair and looked at him sideways. “What’s your problem?”
    He cupped her shoulder in his palm. The softness of her skin invited touching. His fingers slid down her fleshy arm, lower, up the incline of her hip, and around the curve of her behind. She was entirely naked and larger, fuller than he was.
    “It’s too early for