He felt insubstantial and gossamer, like he was spun out of glass. Still stoned but not enough. Everything hurt, even his gums. It would take a long time for the pain to go away, longer than the ICU and the step-down unit, longer than the ward filled with grizzled men watching blaring televisions. Both the pain and the residual pain, which seemed structural in nature, a kind of raw, bludgeoning happiness that would afflict him for months, until he managed to separate from his feelings altogether. Also long-term tinnitus, from the blow to the top of the skull, an interior clanging that would never allow him, even for a moment, to confuse himself with the old Werner.

Two weeks later, Frank, the super, took him around back, through the rubble of the fire, into the space between the buildings. Werner knelt to examine the cat Frank had found hidden in the shadow of an unused doorway. She had pulled her body through several feet of gravel and debris to a protected spot and died there. Werner recognized the tail, ringed gray and brown.

And that took care of that.

Cheri

They came slowly down the street, two boys on bicycles, riding side by side through the glare of a summer afternoon. She’s on the curb, and the sun is so bright and hot it feels like her hair is on fire. If she glances down, she can just see the rubber toes of her sneakers and the skirt of her sundress, the color of root beer. The boys are playing tug-of-war, leaning away from each other, front wheels wobbling, each grasping one end of a long black snake. They have pale matching hair that stands up like the bristles of a brush, and their mouths are open in silent, gleeful shouts. The snake is dusty and limp, but as they sweep past she sees its eye, wide awake, and the sudden flat ribbon of tongue, scarlet against the boy’s white wrist.

This is the way Cheri’s life is passing in front of her eyes, in random unrelated glimpses, one or two a day. They come from nowhere, the bottom of her brain, and are suddenly projected, intense and silent as the Zapruder film, while she watches. This morning as she was eating her oatmeal what passed in front of her eyes was her first husband, shirtless against a blue sky, tying up tomato plants. And now tonight, climbing into bed, the Riley boys with a river snake, circa 1955.