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bear.
    “Why are you writing about this building?” I asked.
    He reared in his seat but the bravado wasn’t there anymore. “She told you that?”
    “Not outright. We were talking that day and I got a hint of what you were doing. So why are you doing it?”
    He poured himself more bourbon. His hands trembled badly but not out of fear. At least not merely out of fear. Gabriella had been his buffer between him and the rest of the world, and without her he was being rubbed raw. “You know why.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “You do!” He sank back into his seat, all knife edges and points. If he moved too quickly he’d slash open a cushion. He frowned and his eyes were already so deep in his skull that they nearly disappeared altogether. He studied me, unsure of just how far to go. Finally his voice leaked words. They fell from his lips so softly I missed them.
    “What?”
    He said, “You’ve seen those who share the house with us.”
    “Seen who?”
    “Those who stalk these halls.”
    “The toxic waste guy bothering you?”
    He lashed out and sent a vase sailing across the room where it crashed against the far wall. “You know of whom I speak!”
    When his speech patterns grew more gentrified I knew he must be really upset. I tried not to let it get too good to me, but it did. I felt a warmth bloom in my guts. Corben was actually nervous, but not about losing his wife. He’d had dinner at the White House and given signings and speeches to crowds numbering in the thousands, but right here in his own living room he sat trembling before something he couldn’t even name.
    “What congress have you had with them?” he asked.
    I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing. I hadn’t laughed in so long that once I got rolling I had a difficult time stopping. Maybe if I’d had more recent congress it wouldn’t have been so funny. Corben stared at me in shock. It got me going even harder. Then I thought of Gabriella and the noise died in my throat.
    “I came to talk about Gabriella, not any of your nonsense.”
    “It’s not nonsense and you know it!” He reached for something else to throw but there was nothing handy so he hurled his glass. It bounced off the sofa and landed right side up on the floor without breaking. “We heard the stories about this place when we were children.”
    “We heard stories about every building in the city. The only reason you’re so scared of this one is because you live here now. If you were over in Trump Tower you’d be acting the same way.”
    He shot to his feet, grabbed another glass, poured more bourbon and splashed some on the floor. He hadn’t been able to hold his liquor in college and wasn’t doing any better now. His voice was already losing its sharpness. “You mock me.”
    “I ought to mock you just for saying ‘you mock me,’ asshole. People really let you get away with talking like that?”
    He ignored me. He’d started to slip away. “I can’t rest. They don’t let me sleep. They work their way into the pages and ruin whatever I’m writing. Isn’t it the same way with you? Tell the truth. How can you find clarity with all the noise? All the tension and weight of their bearing and closeness.”
    Even if I had the pity to spare I wouldn’t throw any his way. “You’ve got a beach house out in Southampton, a mansion in Beverly Hills, and a villa in Italy, right? So why don’t you leave and go spend some time someplace else? Take a trip right after you tell me where your wife is.”
    “I can’t leave, Will. I’m not sure I can ever leave here again. Stark House won’t let me go.”
    “What happened to Gabriella?”
    He dropped back into his chair and sat there blankly, withdrawing further into himself, gulping his drink. The ice rattled loudly. He snorted like a pig. A part of me wanted to beat the hell out of him and force him to talk, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I wasn’t going to get any answers from him. He was willing himself to shut