I rifled through my mother’s clothing. My frame was similar to hers, but a less comely version, as if someone had made a copy of her in a great hurry and it had come out pixilated and lumpen. Her clothes fit me poorly, the almost of them highlighting just how much better they looked on her. I chose a pair of black slacks that hung off her hips like a waterfall. On me they gaped in awkward places, looked like dress-up, nothing like real glamour. I tucked my shirt in. I wanted to leave. I wanted to climb out my parents’ bedroom window. I wanted to go back to Pilz Bar. I wanted the bartender to watch over me while I napped, so I could sleep in peace knowing I was safe. Could I go back to the bar and ask to just sleep for a bit, ask him to sit in a chair while I closed my eyes? Would he ask me what I’d been up to since we’d met, where I had been? I wondered what he’d say about Sam, about him pulling my hair, about harder! Harder! I wondered what he’d say about Langham. The thought of telling him made me nauseated, my throat tightening around the feeling—but there was relief there, too, that someone might know. Maybe he knew already. Those eyes. Maybe he possessed a mystical omniscience, knew where I was and what I’d been doing this whole evening long. Maybe he was with me now, in this closet, his hand on the small of my back.

I edged into the doorway of the living room, trying to observe the group in secret, to take stock before I plunged in. The room was always the same, the curtains of the wide window pulled open onto the landscape of the city at night, the decorative pillows on the couch so numerous you had to stack them to sit down, on the wall the framed series of paintings my parents had bought on the street during their honeymoon in France. On the table that abutted the couch was the award my parents had won a few years before, from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, for a paper they’d published together. This was unusual, but not exactly rare. They had different subspecialties, but since they co-owned the practice, from time to time they collaborated on research. I hated it.