Tomorrow night they’d be settled at Clara’s, and after everyone had gone to sleep, he’d stay up and wait for her, for as long as it took, and they would talk. But that seemed impossibly distant now. He couldn’t bear another day in which she ignored him, in which she hated him. He lay on the sofa and stared at the ceiling. He was done with Boswell. He didn’t feel like reading anything. Restless, he blew the lamp out and stepped out onto the front porch. The moon was out somewhere, low and weak. He could make out the houses across the street. Clara’s place lay hidden in shadow. He was barefoot, but he’d not changed out of his shirt and trousers, and he had a fleeting impulse to go back over there now, crouch in the bushes, and lie in wait for her. Instead, he sat down. If he saw a light over there, maybe he would go. Or he might see her slipping by on the sidewalk, like a black cat in the night.

That was when it occurred to him. He stood up and stepped down to the sidewalk and looked down the street, toward the big Victorian house. He could make out its sharp tower, the second-floor balcony. And in one of the windows, a dim glow.

He started toward it without thinking. It was three houses down. When he reached it he saw that the light was coming from the balcony door they’d entered the other night, and he climbed the metal staircase, the grating digging into his feet. He crossed the porch and tried the door, and it opened with a chirp, the hinges creaking. Down the narrow hall, the big game room was aglow. He stepped inside, pushed the door closed behind him—the panes rattled loudly—and as he turned and made his way down the hall, he considered for the first time that Alma might not be here, that it might be the owners of the house come to stay for the weekend. But as he entered the big room, there she was, in the hallway across from him, holding her hand to her heart.

“Jesus,” she said. “You gave me a heart attack.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, holding up his hands. “I saw the light. I thought it was you.”

They both looked at it, a small lamp of frosted glass, which she’d left on an end table by the sofa. She crossed over to it and blew it out, and for a moment all was dark. And then he saw, at the end of the hall she’d emerged from, soft light spilling from an open door.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

He could just make her out, the line of her shoulder, the side of her head. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. He took a step toward her. “I saw the light, and I figured … I just wanted to talk to you.”

“You should go,” she said.

“But Alma—”