I dreamed it was the first of July. I knew it before I knew it, and I was reading in a patch of sunlight, without taking in the meaning of the words. Nine thirty-three and in my dream I was expecting Novo to get here, tall in his black clothes, in his big black car. I was in that Now and I was also watching it, lining it up next to so many others, thinking, This is how it will go. The garbage truck in the road, jaws grinding. Someone’s cat in a patch of sunlight. The gulls and the old happy-ever-after couple and the woman opposite-but-one and Henry this time, the only difference, a Henry I knew better than anyone, somewhere in the house, calling my name. I held my breath and I waited, and every leaf and feather and blade of grass waited with me, for the thing that was about to happen. Red letter, highlighter pen, page corner, clear as glass. But Novo didn’t come, and something was swallowing me at the edges when I woke up, something vast, all that absence.

Alone in my bed, the memory of him was still there on my body, only hours old. His warm breath, the soft meat of his flesh, the inside of his elbows, the taste of his mouth. I heard his voice and his catching laughter. I saw him smiling, saw the glint in his quick, dark eyes.

That’s all I can say about that, hitting overwhelm, falling apart. When you’re swallowed by a whale you can’t talk about it until it spits you out, until it lets you go, and you remember to swim up and try looking for the light.

TWENTY-FIVE

Later, Henry knocked on my door and I didn’t answer but he came in anyway, and he pulled a chair up to the edge of the bed and sat down.

I kept my eyes closed and I listened to him breathing and we were quiet like that for a long time, because I had nothing. I was nothing. I didn’t know what to say.

Novo’s face was filling my head, getting closer and closer until he wasn’t his likeness anymore, just a dark collection of shapes, and I remember thinking, Is that what he is now—not the same, not here, but somewhere else entirely, diffuse, like ink in water? And is that what I have to hold on to, best-case scenario? All I can hope for? I pictured myself destroying everything—this room, this house, this stupid little town—and I breathed and breathed and waited for the film of it to stop playing on a loop in my head.

“Talk to me,” Henry said.

“You’re the only person who knows,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You’re the only one I can talk to.”

“That’s why I’m here.”