The sleeper in Box 113 was Harrisburg Pennsylvania. The sleepers were all named after their place of origin. Other countries did it differently. Harrisburg Pennsylvania had long eyelashes and a bruise on his cheek that had never faded. The skin of a sleeper was always just a little cooler than you expected. You could get used to anything. She set the alarm in her cell phone to wake her up at seven a.m., which was an hour before the shift change.

In the morning, Harrisburg Pennsylvania was still asleep and Lindsey was still drunk.

All she said to her supervisor, the general office manager, was that she’d fired Bickle and Lowes. Mr. Charles gave her a long-suffering look. He said, “You look a bit rough.”

“I’ll go home early,” she said.

She would have liked to replace Bickle and Lowes with women, but in the end she hired an older man with excellent job references and a graduate student, Jason, who said he planned to spend his evenings working on his dissertation. (He was a philosophy student, and she asked what philosopher his dissertation was on. If he’d said, “Nietzsche,” she might have terminated the interview. But he said, “John Locke.”)

She’d already requested additional grant money to pay for security cameras, but when it was turned down she went ahead and bought the cameras anyway. She had a bad feeling about the two men who worked the Sunday to Wednesday day shift.

as children they were inseparable

On Tuesday, there was a phone call from Alan. He was yelling in Lin-Lan before she could even say hello.

“Berma lisgo airport. Tus fah me?”

“Alan?”

He said, “I’m at the airport, Lin-Lin, just wondering if I can come and stay with you for a bit. Not too long. Just need to keep my head down for a while. You won’t even know I’m there.”

“Back up,” she said. “Alan? Where are you?”

“The airport,” he said, clearly annoyed. “Where all the planes are.”

“I thought you were in Tibet,” she said.

“Well,” Alan said. “That wasn’t working out. I’ve decided to move on.”

“What did you do?” she said. “Alan?”

“Lin-Lin, please,” he said. “I’ll explain everything tonight. When do you get home? Six? I’ll make dinner. House key still under the broken planter?”

“Fisfis meh,” she said. “Fine.”

He hung up.

The last time she’d seen Alan in the flesh was two years ago, just after Elliot had left for good. Her husband.

They’d both been more than a little drunk and Alan was always nicer when he was drunk. He gave her a hug and said, “Come on, Lindsey. You can tell me. It’s a bit of a relief, isn’t it?”