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stream of sunlight delineated each thread of her hair. It was mid-afternoon.
    “Early day?” asked Lewis. He removed a jack-in-the-box from the arm of a chair, sealing the lid on its unsprung clown. Lisa Mitchell neither moved nor spoke; she simply held her purse and stared. “Hello?” he tested. She sat motionless, queerly mute, like a table lamp or a podium. Then her shoulders gave a single tight spasm, as if an insect had buzzed onto the nape of her neck, and her eyes glassed with tears. Lewis felt, suddenly, understanding and small and human. “Do you need anything?” he asked. “Some water?” Lisa drew a quick high breath and nodded.
    Lewis rinsed a glass in the kitchen sink, then filled it from a bay on the door of the refrigerator, watching the crushed ice and a finger of water issue from a narrow spout. When he handed it to Lisa, she sipped until her mouth pooled full, swallowed, and placed it on a side-table. Her fingertips left transparent annulets across the moist bank of the glass, her lips a wine-red crescent at its rim. Lewis sat next to her on the sofa. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. His voice had become as gentle as the aspiration of the ceiling-vents.
    “I . . . ,” said Lisa, and the corner of her mouth twitched. “He said I. . . .” Her throat gave out a little clicking noise. She trifled with the apron of her purse—snapping it open and shut, open and shut. “I lost my job,” she said. And at this she sagged in on herself, shaking, and began to weep. Her head swayed, and her back lurched, and she pressed her hands to her eyes. When Lewis touched a finger to her arm, she fell against him, quaking.
    “It’s okay,” he said. “It will all be okay.” Resting against his shoulder, Lisa cried and shivered and slowly grew still. Her purse dropped to the floor as she relaxed into a sequence of calm, heavy breaths. Then, abruptly, she was crying once again. She wavered in this way—between moments of peace and trepidation—for what seemed an hour, as the white midday light slowly windowed across the carpet. After she had fallen quiet, Lewis held her and listened to her breathing. (She sighed placidly, flurrying puffs of air through her nose; she freed a little string of hiccups that seemed both deeply organic and strangely mechanical.) The sleeve of his shirt, steeped with her tears, was clinging to his upper arm, and his hand was pin-pricking awake on her back. He could feel the warm pressure of her head against his collarbone. When she shifted on the cushions, he swallowed, listening to the drumbeat of his heart. He slid his fingers over the rungs of her spine, smoothing the ripples from her blouse, and she seemed to subside into the bedding of the sofa. It was as if she were suddenly just a weight within her clothing, suspended by a hanger from his shoulder, and he thought for a moment that she had fallen asleep—but, when she blinked, he felt the soft flicker of her eyelashes against his neck. Her stockings, sleek and coffee-brown, were beginning to ladder at the knee, and Lewis reached to touch a ravel of loose nylon. He found himself instead curling a hand through her hair.
    Lisa lifted her head, looking him in the eye, as his fingers swept across a rise in her scalp. He felt her breath mingling with his. Her eyes, drawing near, were azure-blue, and walled in black, and staring into his own. They seemed to hover before him like splashes of reflected light, and Lewis wondered what they saw. The tip of her nose met with his, and when she licked her lips, he felt her tongue glance across his chin. His lips were dry and tingling, his stomach as tight as a seed pod. When his hand gave a reflexive flutter on her back, Lisa stiffened.
    She tilted away from him, blinking, the stones of her teeth pressing into her lip. The grandfather clock voiced three vibrant chimes, and she stood and planed her blouse into the waist of her skirt.
    When she looked down upon him, her eyes were