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here.
    â€œIf it makes you happy,” I said.
    â€œIt fills me with pure delight,” said the orderly.
    It was a shock: it was not yet noon.
    I was surprised to see Steve in the lobby, holding Connie’s hand. Connie was staying quiet, sitting there, eyes on me.
    â€œWe didn’t know what to expect. We thought you’d be in overnight,” said Steve, stammering. Steve was my only client to have money in serious quantities, but we had never been especially close. I was touched that he had taken the trouble.
    Then Connie was out of her chair, standing straight, jacket over one arm, a businesswoman with little time to spare. She was pale, her lipstick too dark, tiny fine lines of weariness around her eyes. How much had she been able to figure out, I wondered. Everything, judging from the stillness in her eyes, they way she held herself in. That was okay—I hoped that she knew. I couldn’t bear telling her.
    It was a surprise when Connie touched my face. She looked me in the eyes, and kept me there, like a woman trying to remember a secret.
    â€œA terrible thing,” said Steve. “Absolutely terrible.”
    â€œSometimes we don’t realize the kind of world we live in,” said Connie. She said this without much feeling, and there was an unspoken communication between us: we were going to have a very important conversation soon, whenever we both felt I was strong enough to take it.
    â€œMaybe we are better off not knowing,” said Steve. When he closed his eyes as he spoke his stammer was not so bad.
    â€œThey towed your car,” said Connie.
    â€œNaturally,” I said, intending irony. But as soon as I said it I didn’t care. If they mashed the car into a glittering cube of scrap steel it would not matter. I had picked the car out of a brochure, that one , I said, and then worked the dealer down to such a low price he kept saying I was killing him, like it was a joke. Yes, I had agreed. I was killing him, and we had both laughed.
    My car represented a problem I could relish, something to think about. Even in my reduced state I was still a proceduralist. There is a method, always. Someone has to be called, a fee has to be paid, a form signed. Besides, I knew people in the police department.
    â€œIt was a mistake,” she said. “I told them so, and they agreed.”
    â€œThey?” I said. It was hard to move, talk, think.
    â€œSomeone parked the car on College Avenue,” said Steve, “A meter maid tagged it in a red zone. The car got towed, and then Connie—”
    He had trouble saying her name, the hard C stopping him, a rock he kept trying to scramble over, slipping.
    Tickets. Parking meters. It was all so fiercely ordinary. A skinny young man flew past on a skateboard. There was my car, at the curb. I was almost sorry to see it. I felt like a man about to give away all his possessions. I wouldn’t need this Sahara-brown, option-loaded vehicle anymore. It was at that moment that I caught myself, like a man about to embezzle, his hand on the check, his pen poised to forge a signature. A crime—I was thinking of committing a crime, violating my moral duty. I had been thinking that it would be better to take my own life.
    â€œShe was raped,” I said.
    â€œTerrible,” stammered Steve at last.
    Even talking about it was brutal. Having begun, I plodded ahead. “And stabbed. Many times.” Eleven times . I couldn’t say it.
    Steve Fayette couldn’t get a word out, just shook his head. I had misjudged this man.
    I continued, “And he’s still out there, still at large.” Never before had at large sounded so literal, the openness and vastness of the world. He could be anywhere.
    â€œIt was wonderful for you to sit with Connie,” I said.
    â€œAnything I can do,” said Steve.
    â€œI think I was a suspect for a few minutes,” I said. “I sat there running through the very short list