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inventory of the other two shelves. A depleting carton of condom boxes, a few blister packs of genuine Viagra tablets, three cardboard boxes of tea bags in sealed sachets, several cartons of foul-smelling Jilu cigarettes, and one of infinitely more valuable Camels. With the global labor shortage, anything made, picked, tapped, or sorted by hand had become horrendously expensive. Beneath the smokes, some bars of French soap, 9-mm. cartridges, and one and a half cartons of LP propane canisters. Behind those, his real treasures: salt, pepper, paprika, olive oil, and a bottle of French Bordeaux that he was saving for an occasion that warranted French Bordeaux. He closed the cache and filled Sissy’s bowl. The cat wolfed his food.
    Oscar set a saucepan of water on the gas ring, and it began to tick as it heated. He opened the kitchen window. Rain dripped steadily from the awning above the window like strings of dirty glass beads. Somewhere out in the night, a fusillade of gunshots rolled off the wind. A few moments later, a single shot, then silence. Closer, two doors down, a small weasel-headed dog named either Terry or Derek yapped for the ten thousandth time, and a deep-voiced woman yelled for Terry/Derek to shut the Christless fuck up. Oscar filled a glass with water and poured it onto the soil of the potted oregano on the windowsill he was trying to coax back to life after a fortnight of leaden, leaking skies. Below, in the yard, the rain tutted in the leaves of his lime and lemon trees, and a cold breeze ruffled the stands of rosemary and basil and the overgrown patch of lawn grass. The world turned from black to silver for a moment as lightning, getting closer, stabbed at the TV towers on the hunch of hills to the west. A moment later came a rumble of thunder.
    Oscar checked the water and stripped off his damp clothes, shivering. The fingers of cold air on his skin raised goose bumps, and forgotten blood stirred in his groin. It was just neglect, he knew; like thehouse, the organs were waiting impatiently for attention. Two fumbling affairs since the divorce, both mercifully brief and both truncated by sensible women who saw past whatever little rough charm he had left into an empty future. He felt idiotic and desperate. He searched the dark houses surrounding in the vain hope that a window would illuminate for him, revealing a shapely silhouette.
    Knowing he shouldn’t, Oscar pulled open the kitchen drawer and found the piece of paper he’d tried a hundred times to throw away. Sissy watched from the floor, and his eyes narrowed as if in disapproval. Oscar found a phone with signal and dialed.
    A click as the phone was answered.
    “Hello?” She sounded tired. “Hello?”
    In the background, Oscar heard a man’s voice. Then crying. An infant: a hungry newborn.
    “Hello?” Sabine repeated. Her voice changed—quieter, harder. “Hello?”
    He hung up. His penis had lulled to a sleeping pendulum. The first year, there had been reasons to call Sabine—the separation, the divorce, division of assets. The second year, fewer excuses, the odd checks to see if the other was attending a mutual friend’s party and to negotiate around awkward meetings. After her remarriage, there had been no cause to call. They’d loved each other once, then their marriage became a bicycle pedaled on one side only—still a bicycle, but dangerous. Finally, the acknowledgment that they had to get off before they both crashed. He’d bought out her half of the mortgage and kept the house. Why had he fought so hard for it? The house was a museum from which all valuable exhibits had been removed, a leaky-roofed symbol of the foolish hope that things could be reversed, that time could go backward, that accidents could be undone.
    Sissy startled Oscar, jumping onto the kitchen bench, to the windowsill, and out into the night. The water was boiling now. Down the street, Terry/Derek barked again. Oscar yelled, “Keep your bloody dog