I could see my landlord through the front window. He’d emerged onto his deck in his familiar lumberjack jacket/shirt combination.

The need to talk to him came at me sharp, insistent, even if just to reassure me he hadn’t seen anyone on the property. That all I had to worry about was him.

So I stepped out onto my deck and waved to him.

But it wasn’t my neighbor.

It was Langer.

[85]

Did Langer expect me to step out at that moment? No, his automatic rifle was pointed down. Apparently, he didn’t trust a handgun with a silencer would be enough.

At least he knew enough not to raise the rifle. Not with my hand in my jacket pocket.

We could see each other clear in the faded light, with the river slowing again but loud. It would take a miracle to hear each other unless we shouted. So we shouted. To the water and the birds and to each other. Two absurd, deranged apes hooting and posturing. Infusing even small, unimportant words with violence.

“Slowly take your hand out of your pocket and lie down on the deck,” he shouted.

“No!” I shouted.

“No? What’ve you got in your pocket?” he shouted.

“We’ll talk like this and then you’ll leave,” I shouted.

“How do you know I want to talk?” he shouted.

“How do you think?”

I saw him consider that a moment. Run-down, shadow embellishing his cheekbones.

“All right. I’ll play along for now.”

Then it was like he didn’t know what to ask me. Before something clicked. A flushed quality to his face, as if he’d taken drugs.

“You’re not easy to kill.”

“You almost did.”

“Yeah, well, it’s something I’m good at.”

“I have no quarrel with the truth of that.”

Langer smiled. “What are you? Out of an old book?”

“Some days.”

“Rope-a-dope, huh? Well, I’m no dope.”

A fire ate at Langer from long before the warehouse. A kind of disease had taken him, but he was still alive and walking among us. That’s what I decided the longer we shouted at each other.

I was still figuring out what to reply when he shouted across the void again.

“Why did she give you things?” Instead of giving them to me. Genuine. A genuine hurt behind it. “Why’d she take the time? Why’d she bother with you?”

I hated Langer on principle. But I also hated him for presuming to make me small in Silvina’s estimation. Even as I tried to do the same to him. How had she ever loved this?

“What about you? What did you give Silvina? Biotoxins? People who wouldn’t think twice about—”

“Shut the fuck up! You don’t know! You have no idea.”