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terrible oversight, or perhaps brilliant.”
    â€œReally,” Jason says. He runs the Exacto blade under a thumbnail.
    â€œTruly,” Ditmar says. “The stuff brewed and bubbled while they ate.” The tar in the stem of his pipe gurgles as he puffs. “The fumes killed them, every one.” He lets the smoke curl from his lips to wash over his face. “When the rescue team found them, it was like a still life, only dead. Sitting at a laboratory bench, sandwiches in hand. And the beaker of solution baked into the famous non-stick coating.”
    â€œReally,” Jason says.
    â€œUrban myth,” Andy says, both a response to Ditmar, and an answer to a clue.
    â€œOne of them, they say, was slumped over a crossword puzzle.” Ditmar places his pipe in the ashtray chained to the table.
    Bruce rouses himself from his slumber. I will paint my boat blue, he thinks.

Noises
    She had just finished throwing up when she heard the doorbell. Beverly reached for a hand towel from the built-in linen closet in her mother-in-law’s bathroom. The thick textured fabric rubbed roughly against her lips as she wiped her mouth. She ran water in the sink to wash down the bits of regurgitated grapefruit pith, toast and mucous, then rinsed the cloth and held it to her forehead. Her post-puke fog left her enervated yet relieved. The tension in her neck and shoulders had eased, the sour wedge in her gut had disappeared. Morning sickness — morning, noon and night. She felt best those few minutes right after vomiting.
    The doorbell rang.
    Beverly caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the sink, and was surprised at the reflection. Despite nausea, she looked good. Everyone said, you absolutely glow. Her short brown hair, although dishevelled, shone with a hint of a wave and body it hadn’t had before. Her complexion was clear and silky. Colour flashed on her cheeks. She looked terrific, but felt like shit. Six-and-a-half more months of this?
    The doorbell rang.
    She brushed her teeth. She was careful not to probe too deeply with the brush—that provoked a gag reaction. The roof of her mouth and the back of her throat felt like they were coated with a thick paste, and she suddenly retched—just once, bringing nothing up—thinking of wet papier-mâché.
    The doorbell rang.
    â€œHold your horses or go away,” she muttered as she went downstairs.
    The visitor stood close to the townhouse, inside the drip line of the eave. He was reaching to ring the bell again when Beverly opened the door. She said nothing, just looked at him through the screen. The rain had plastered his thinning white hair to his scalp. A few drops hung in his bushy brows. His skin was very pale. He looked fifty, maybe sixty years old. Beverly thought of a potato, and with his blue eyes swimming in his face, decided he should be Irish.
    â€œMary and Frank aren’t in,” the man said, nodding his head towards the front door of the neighbouring condominium, ten feet away. A pair of hedge clippers, red wooden handles opened like an X, and a long-handled spade were on the patch of grass that passed for lawn beside the shared sidewalk. The morning’s downpour had slackened to a drizzle, and the tools seemed varnished by wet. Beverly remembered the poem she had read in college about a wheelbarrow. So much depends.
    She didn’t speak.
    â€œMary and Frank aren’t home,” he started again. “I sometimes go there for lunch when the weather’s bad.” He reached a hand inside his windbreaker—an old-fashioned one, Beverly noticed, probably rayon, collarless with frayed corduroy trim and a dulled brass zipper—and he pulled out a wrinkled brown paper sack. The shoulders of his jacket were dark with rain, even his lunch bag looked damp. “They let me use their microwave. For my lunch.”
    Somewhere in the neighbourhood, a beep-beep-beep signalled that a truck was backing up,