So this life was over. She got off the tram and glanced briefly through the park down the corniche, then turned and walked up to their gate and through the garden, up the stairwell, down the familiar hall, feeling heavy and old and very, very tired. She stuck the right key into the lock without thinking about it, and walked into the apartment and looked at her things, at Michel’s stacks of books, the Kandinsky print over the couch, Spencer’s sketches, the battered coffee table, the battered dining table and chairs, the kitchen nook with everything in its place, including the little face on the cabinet by the sink. How many lifetimes ago had she known that face? All these pieces of furniture would go their ways. She stood in the middle of the room, drained and desolate, grieving for these years that had slipped by almost without noticing; almost a decade of productive work, of real life, now blowing away in this latest gale of history, a paroxysm that she was going to have to try to direct or at least ride out, trying her best to nudge it in ways that would allow them to survive. Damn the world, damn its intrusiveness, its mindless charge, its inexorable roll through the present, wrecking lives as it went. . . . She had liked this apartment and this town and this life, with Michel and Spencer and Diana and all her colleagues at work, all her habits and her music and her small daily pleasures.

She looked glumly at Michel, who stood behind her in the doorway, staring around as if trying to commit the place to memory. A Gallic shrug: “Nostalgia in advance,” he said, trying to smile. He felt it too— he understood— it wasn’t just her mood, this time, but reality itself.

She made an effort and smiled back, walked over and held his hand. Downstairs there was a clatter as the Zygote gang came up the stairs. They could stay in Spencer’s apartment, the bastards. “If it works out,” she said, “we’ll come back someday.”

8