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cul-de-sac. At one point a figure passed the house, some nightwalker, its shadow cast out behind like an arrow pointing ever away. Keith watched the figure’s slow progress as it bisected that circular space, passing under the streetlights until the line it made with its motion disappeared beyond the angle of his view through the window. The street so still that it seemed a photograph or a museum diorama. He waited there at the window, watching in the encompassing silence, but the figure, whoever it might have been,did not return to his view. He might have been disappointed but if so he did not acknowledge it. Instead, he recognized only self-reliance, a position and idea he had always held, even as he turned away from the window and stared down at the faint speckles of eggshell that flecked over his hands.
    “Can you hear me?”
    “I can hear you.”
    “Oh, I can see you.”
    “I can see you too.” A pause. Then: “How … how are you?”
    “I’m OK,” she said. Tears were already streaming down her face.
    He stared at her. The compartment was so quiet. So terribly quiet. “It’ll be OK, Barb. We’ll be OK.”
    And then the phone was ringing and he burst out spastically, still half asleep, and answered it without even really understanding what he was doing, the laptop glowing in his mind, his body falling back into gravity all at once as he sputtered into the receiver: “Wh-what? Hello?”
    “Keith, it’s Dr. Hoffmann.”
    “Oh,” he said. “Dr. Hoffmann.” He was half sitting, the blankets and sheets splayed around him.
    “Everything OK?” Hoffmann said. “You don’t sound well. Did I wake you?”
    “No, no. I’m … I’m OK. I was … I was asleep.” He lay back down, slowly, carefully.
    “You want me to call back?”
    “No, no, I’m fine. I’m awake.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yeah, it’s fine. I’m awake. It’s fine.” The clock on the floor by the bed glowed faintly in the morning light: 8:17.
    “OK, then.” A pause. “Well, I’m calling because you missed your appointment.”
    He tilted his head back to the pillow and closed his eyes. The image of Barb’s face remained: a blurred shape on a laptop screen. The gauze of his memory. A haze of ghosts. Even you, Keith Corcoran. Even you. “I have to apologize for that, I guess,” he said at last. “I’m not at JSC right now.”
    “Well, I know that but I had to make a couple of calls to find out. It would have been nice to get a call from you about this.”
    “It was kind of sudden,” he said, his eyes opening slowly to the flat white emptiness of the room.
    “You know, when people miss appointments often there’s an underlying reason.”
    Keith paused before answering. “Yeah, that might be but this time I just forgot,” he said. “I’m taking a vacation.”
    “Where to?”
    “Well, right now I’m home.”
    “Oh. How long have you been there?”
    “Two days. I’ve been painting.”
    “Painting?”
    “The place needs a paint job.”
    “You’ve got work to do.”
    “Yes.”
    “I didn’t mean the painting. I’m sure it’s hard being there.”
    “Oh, I guess so,” Keith said.
    “You want to talk some? I could do a phone appointment tomorrow.”
    The ceiling was a blank white void above him. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe give me a few more days to settle in here.”
    “We’ve made some good progress over the last few weeks. I’d like to keep that momentum going.”
    “I would too. I’m busy here with the painting, though. And I’m really doing OK.”
    Hoffman was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I’d like you tothink about why you forgot to tell me you were leaving JSC. We can focus on that for our next appointment, but give it some thought in the meantime. Think of it as your homework assignment.”
    “All right,” Keith said, without conviction.
    “Call me in a week and let me know how it’s going and we’ll set an appointment then,” Hoffmann said.
    “That sounds