It was from up there that he saw me. He looked down at me and for a moment everything about him stopped, the way an animal stops when it knows it’s been seen—so completely still that it hums with it, at some secret frequency, some planetary resonance, like a struck fork. Then it was over, so fast that I questioned it had happened at all. I don’t think I moved either. I didn’t blink. I must have stopped breathing, because it came to me from somewhere that I was running out of air. I wasn’t the only one. Every other creature in striking distance forgot what they were doing for a moment when Novo landed, derailed themselves mid-train-of-thought without knowing why. I guarantee. His brazen newness brought its own brand of silence with it. Someone’s cat broke from washing in a patch of sunlight, triangular, limbs stretched, feet splayed, eyes narrowed to slits. Even the gulls stopped their jaw and their hustle. It was only after he dropped neatly through an upstairs window and out of sight that the ordinary noise of things flooded back. My lungs regained their composure and the birds started up again and the cat slunk under a van and shot into a yard through a gap in the hedge. The old, always-gardening couple came out onto their porch like sleepwalkers, faces set to longing, leaf-blower to suck. The woman opposite-but-one came out and paused on her step for a second like she’d forgotten something, sniffing the air like a bloodhound, and then barricaded herself back in, kicking her door shut so hard it knocked over a plant and spoiled her spotless WELCOME mat with broken clay and clumps of thick black soil.

Upstairs, Charlie Parker was getting tangled in the curtains and I could hear Henry cursing not so quietly under his breath. Mum banged on the front window and frowned, breathing Rorschach clouds against the glass, her skin already clammy with the heat and blotched like sausage meat. I said, “Did you see that?” but she pulled a face at me, arms spread out like, What, I have to do all this unpacking myself? so I waved her away and pretended it wasn’t anything special, even though I knew already that it was.

The mailman parked his truck at the top of the road and made his way to Mrs. Midler’s front door, head down, whistle-whistle, same as usual, delivering mail to a lady who no longer existed, putting it through the letter box like nothing had changed. He didn’t notice the battered black car, didn’t feel all that novelty pulling on the air until it was tight as a bow. I don’t know how he could have missed it.