He started opening his mouth to give Rita the culturally appropriate response of “Thank you,” and she stopped him.

“No need for politeness here. Politeness only constipates the air. You can start following the schedule tomorrow. Do you want me to come tuck you in?”

“Yes.”

He walked down the outdoor hallway to his unit, ate some cashew nuts that were left on the bedside table, and crawled into bed, unable to believe his luck, an entire room in which to go mad. Rita knocked on the door and walked in, carrying a candle, even though it was three in the afternoon. She smoothed the covers over his shoulders.

He fell asleep in the twin bed that had been in the same place since 1962.

~PAUSE IN NARRATIVE REPORT~

The Bio-meter remained stuck on LACK, but a thumb drive contained audio files starting from Rita’s arrival. The notes explained that she kept the audio files as evidence that she was not harming the resters. The files were unedited, so I had to scan through their real-time narration, including hours of Blithe sleeping and a gentle, unidentifiable hum.

~NARRATIVE REPORT CONTINUED~

The first week, as his insides turned to angry jelly, Blithe adopted a uniform of floral robe over jeans with shower slides, participated in the cathartic yells, ate yummy cans of beans and hot dogs, and learned to identify local wildlife down by the shore. He whispered Least bittern, least bittern, double-crested cormorant, double-crested cormorant to himself when he needed to calm down and befriended Lily and Olga, twin coders who set out glamping and ended up at Rita’s Resting Place and Motel by the Sea. Together they mocked the turtlenecked tourists in Units 13 and 14, who paid seventy-five dollars a night, ate peanut-butter crackers, and had never completely lost their shit. Each night, he licked the bottom of the plastic cups of hot chocolate to get the last sandy dregs. The highlight of his day was Rita tucking him in by candlelight.

On the seventh day, the Salton Sea stilled. Blithe had gained a few pounds from cereal and the mildest exercise and had fallen out with Jennifer, a drifter who offered him one of her crystals on the first night and then tried to grab his dick on the second. He would have gone to mediator-Hector about this, but language was not useful to him, language was too finite and cloying for his breakage.

Blithe went into his room. It was the long part of the day, after the cathartic yell and before birdwatching, when most guests tried to steal internet and watch TV, or jerk off, or kill themselves.

Rita prided herself on a very low suicide-success rate.

He took a velvet pouch out of his toiletry kit and sat on the edge of his bed. He pulled out a thick silver ring and held it under the harsh lamplight.

Encircle thrice, read the engraving.