“Lunch,” I said.

“Everything is moving along beautifully.”

I used my key to ride the elevator. There was a woman in the car with me and, as with the woman in the diner, I felt that I had seen her before. She said nothing to me, fairly ignored me. She was still in the car when I exited on the sixth floor. I stood outside Eigen’s room and knocked. There was no answer. I thought about the yoga class and the swimming and it didn’t sound to me now like she was being held prisoner the way I had been imagining. I had no good reason to enter her room whether she was there or not, so I turned, opened my own door, and walked inside. My room offered a pleasant view of the canal and the river beyond that.

As reported, the closet and drawers were filled with clothes. It amused me to find clothes that were exactly like my wardrobe at home hanging next to suits and a dinner jacket and dress shirts. There were cuff links on the dresser with my initials and a Patek Philippe chronograph. I didn’t know much about watches, but from the weight of it I knew that it was expensive.

I lay on the bed with Trigo beside me and stared at the ceiling. I realized my heart was racing and I tried to slow it down. I of course thought of nothing, tried to think of nothing, but that only got me more excited. I turned my mind to the Goldbach conjecture and worked on a proof that I had been building for years. Every time I thought I was close, I would discover a glaring hole in my reasoning, some so obvious as to be embarrassing. It was the problem that fascinated me. I was not at heart a problem solver. This fact was even more evident as I tried to imagine how I might extract myself from this current mess.

Trigo barked just before there was a knock at my door. I got up and looked through the peephole. There was a woman there, dressed in clingy exercise clothes. Her hair was pulled back and her wide-angled face looked familiar. It wasn’t until I opened the door that I realized the woman was Gloria. Her afro was gone and she wore makeup. She stepped inside and closed the door, grabbed me by the front of my shirt, and pulled me close. She put her face against mine. After a few seconds I realized this was a kiss.

“What was that for?” I asked.

She didn’t answer, but pushed me backward toward the bed. “Gloria, I’m tired. I just drove all the way from Rhode Island.” I had a fleeting thought of my car parked on that street off Wisconsin, wondered if it would be towed.

She gave me another headbutt of a kiss and pushed me down on the bed next to Trigo.

“Have you seen Eigen?” I asked.