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nursery rhymes?” She giggled throatily.
    “What’s wrong with the sheep?” the visitor asked. “What does your boss think is wrong with the sheep?”
    “What sheep?” the narrator inside his head answered. She had said nothing, apparently having lost consciousness, her head now sagging.
    “What happened to the partying, anyway? ” the big man wondered.
    The visitor lifted her head by the hair, and the whites of her eyes showed. He held the syringe where she could see it. No one liked a needle. The girl’s eyes popped, and she shied away.
    “Kira, if you don’t tell me about the sheep I’m going to inject you with this. You will not like what it does. Everything’s going to be a lot more real, more clear, for you, once you’ve had this shot. A lot less fun, I promise. He and I are still going to party with you, Kira, but something tells me you’re not going to like it. You see how big a man he is?” The visitor pointed at him. “He gets sloppy seconds. Think about that a minute.” He waited for some sign from her. Got nothing. “I need to know what your boss is thinking about the sheep,” the visitor said. “I need to know that right now. You can help yourself a lot by telling me.”
    Did he really think she heard him? Maybe she could see his lips move. Maybe, even, she recognized every other word. But she was too far down, too far back, to fully understand him at normal speed.
    “You know . . . you are really hung up on these sheep.”
    The visitor spun around and looked at him. Only then did he realize he’d spoken it aloud into the room.
    “What the fuck did you just say?” the visitor asked.
    She came to life again, baaing like a sheep. It saved him having to answer. She laughed gutturally as she surfaced. “You aren’t, like, one of those kind of guys?” She pursed her lips, trying to contain her laughter, but it spilled out of her, along with a good deal of spittle, which the visitor then wiped off his hand and onto his pressed pants. “Can I tell you a little secret?” She egged him closer.
    The visitor leaned in to her. The syringe hovered in his right hand, like a preacher’s cross at last rites.
    She said, “If a guy wants to visit my kitchen door now and then, that’s okay with me. I even kind of like it. But if he comes around to my front door, he’d better wipe his feet.” She guffawed, rocking up the front legs of the big chair.
    “One last try, Kira.” He wielded the syringe impossibly close to her face.
    She appeared to lock onto it. Perhaps, for just a fraction of a second, she grasped her situation, understood what was to come.
    “I want to go home,” she said.
    “The sheep, Kira. What’s wrong with the sheep?” The needle pointed south, aimed directly at her forearm.
    “I want to go home.”

MONDAY

8
    “KEEP TRYING,” WALT TOLD NANCY, HIS SECRETARY, THE phone clutched under his chin as he kneeled on the kitchen floor, wrestling a small foot into a tight boot.
    “It’s too tight,” his daughter complained.
    “Push harder,” he said.
    “Me?” Nancy asked over the phone.
    “No. That’s for Emily. You keep trying to reach Mark. I want to hear the minute you find him.”
    “Got it.”
    He hung up and set the phone down on the kitchen table and went back to the battle of the boots. He’d been caught by the fluke fall storm, hadn’t had any of the girls’ winter clothes ready. Now he was racing to get them dressed and into the car in time to avoid a tardy. He’d managed four hours’ sleep.
    “What if I put soap all over it?” he said, holding her foot. “You think that’ll help it get into that boot?” He tickled the bottom of her foot and Emily screeched. It was strange that she should be so ticklish when Nikki was not. In every other way, they were identical. Until Nikki had developed a tiny mole by her right eyebrow, even their parents had had trouble telling them apart.
    “Nooo!” She giggled.
    “Olive oil?” he