I went out. It was crepuscular, the rain slant and chill. The few people I saw seemed to have pressing errands. I saw a family, mum, dad, and two kids, climbing into a car packed to the gunnels with their possessions. They had a bichon frise too, and in her arms, the little girl carried a cage with sawdust in it, a hamster wheel, and a little plastic house in which, I presumed, a small creature was huddling. Then there were no more people.

Traffic lights reflected on the surface of black puddles that lapped at drains, rippling the colors. Rain seeped under my cuffs and ran down my neck, and my feet grew so wet I stopped going around the puddles and started plowing straight through them. The map disintegrated further each time I looked at it, the puddles deepened until turning a corner, I found that the whole street was flooded, and I was wading through water that got deeper as I went on.

It didn’t occur to me to turn back.

A greenish river flowed past, leaves and paper coffee cups and plastic bags riding the current, the surface in patches marbled with oil. The sky was wadded with low-hanging clouds, and in front of the houses, at the top of the steps that led up from the street, sandbags had been placed in front of the doors. From somewhere above the city, the sirens were wailing again.

An upturned chair raced past, its legs pointing to heaven. I plowed on, the water eddying about my legs.

Galleria Vittorio Buono, the gallery named in Alice’s article, was where it was supposed to be, but still further from the center than I had imagined, sandwiched between a shop with women’s clothes in the window and a stationer’s. There was no sign of anyone as I climbed the steps to ring the bell. No sound came, so I hammered on the door fit to wake the dead. While I waited for a response, I turned to watch the water racing past. Somewhere a church bell had started tolling. My mind was curiously quiet. It occurred to me that if the waters rose any further, it might be risky to try to go back, but I wasn’t particularly concerned about this, or about anything else, so that when I heard footsteps approaching and then the door open behind me, I felt neither fear nor excitement, only a certain inevitability. Still, it was a moment before I was able to turn and face whoever it was who had opened the door.

I watched David recognize me, and then I pushed past him through the doorway, our shoulders brushing.

“What are you doing here?”

We were in a white-walled room. There were empty spaces on the walls where paintings had hung. They lay resting in their frames against the wall. More were stacked against a desk.

“Perhaps I need something to go over the mantelpiece.”