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nutmeg, which is the Surprise in her Macaroni Hot Dog Surprise. Enid has seen three flying saucers in her life— wavering silver brightnesses that paused over her house and then lifted suddenly away—though two of them were actually cigar-shaped. One of the callers informs Art Bell that he is himself a time traveler, but when Mr. Bell asks the caller what the coming decade holds in store for us, the caller will say only that there will be a war somewhere, and an earthquake somewhere else, and that a beloved Hollywood film star will die. After the Macaroni Hot Dog Surprise has cooled, Enid slides it out of the pan, listening to the heavy wet kissing noise it makes as she levers it free with a spatula, then she seals it in a Tupperware container. She carries it outside and across the street.
    Janet answers the door to that woman from across the way, Enid Embry, the one who has referred to her and Christopher as
You Poor People
ever since Celia went missing. I brought
You
Poor People
something to eat. If
You Poor People
need anything, don’t hesitate to call on me. Janet can’t help but grate her teeth when she hears the phrase, biting so hard that she thinks sometimes they will shear apart like pieces of shale, but she knows that Enid means well, and she thanks her for the Macaroni Hot Dog Surprise. Enid says goodbye, and Janet shuts the door. There is a small breeze in the air that was not there this morning, and she can feel it pushing through the open kitchen window, swelling every so often and rattling the cooking utensils that hang on their metal hooks. She picks up an envelope that has wafted to the floor—a royalty check from Christopher’s publisher. Thank God the old books are still selling. He hasn’t been able to write anything in years. She has decided that she will have to buy a new dress for the funeral—or, rather, for the memorial service. Though she has reminded Christopher of the distinction a thousand times, she still finds herself making the same slip in her innermost thoughts. She discovers him in the bathroom, where he is standing with his head craned back, his mouth open in a hapless O, squeezing eyedrops into his eyes. He looks almost like a baby bird begging for food, so adorably helpless that she can’t help but forgive him for a moment for everything he’s ever done, laughing and kissing him on the cheek. She tells him that she is going to head into town for a while. Do you need anything? she asks, and he says that he doesn’t, futilely trying to smother a yawn.
    The impulse is irresistible: whenever Christopher tilts his head back and stares into the light, the yawns rise through him one after another, entire chains of them, as though he were simply a chimney exhaling rings of smoke. Janet heads upstairs in her socks, and a few minutes later he hears her marching back down, her footsteps sounding more square and solid in her shoes. He switches the bathroom light off. It has been weeks since he slept through till morning, and yesterday, when he was shaving, he found a tick-sized system of exploded blood vessels in his right eye. Every night he wakes at two or three o’clock, when even the frogs and the crickets have fallen silent. No matter what he tries he can’t settle back to sleep. He pads to the kitchen in his T-shirt and underwear and eats boluses of peanut butter from the end of a spoon, plates of leftover casserole, entire boxes of saltine crackers. Once, at four in the morning, Janet stumbled into the kitchen and caught him with a brick of cheddar in one hand and a cucumber in the other, both cheeks bloated with food, and she turned around and went back to bed. He has learned what every beggar knows: that for short periods of time, a few days perhaps, no longer, he can replace sleep with eating or eating with sleep, though it has been at least twenty-four hours since he has done either. His stomach is just now beginning to settle. The last time he saw Celia she was balancing