I thought about this all night, and this is the closest I’ve come to getting my head around what happened, what was going through her mind. Maybe it wasn’t like this, all calm and methodical. Maybe it was done in a burst of panic or inspiration. I’m really just trying to understand. These are only thoughts. Oh, I forgot to ask you last time—how are things with you? // Yi

Now Dave is not only peeved but also somewhat depressed. He doesn’t want to think about a suicide during his work day. Then he feels like a bad sort of person. Mayling sometimes calls him insensitive, which most of the time he considers unfair and perplexing. Now that he’s learned about the suicide, he feels involved, even though his involvement is a mistake. Can he uninvolve himself? No, no, he must stop. He has deadlines. He’ll do the right thing and come clean. In his reply, he’ll express sympathy for her loss, but also say that he believes she has the wrong Dave, which is quite all right, could happen to anyone, blah blah blah. He might add that it was still nice to hear from her, and you know, no hard feelings about not having kept in touch over the years, happens to the best of us, and that he wishes her all the best. No, no, too petty and insincere, and he sounds too ho ho British. He’ll have to work on this a bit. Maybe at lunch. For now, he needs to turn his attention to the Nike store.

The rest of his day:

1:00 pm. Instead of staying in the office to write his reply, Dave goes out for pizza with his colleagues Nathan and Tony. They go to a new place on the other side of the river called Angelo’s. Dave orders extra anchovies by mistake.

2:15–4:00 pm. Dave is distracted by thoughts of Yi; he does not make the progress he had hoped to.

4:05–4:56 pm. Furthermore, he does not pay full attention during the project meeting; at one point the Netherlands Nike representative catches him staring out the window with his mouth open.

6:01 pm. He calls Mayling and tells her he’ll have to stay late.

7:25 pm. Mayling calls and asks how much later he’ll be, and Dave says he doesn’t know, catching the sharpness in his voice. She says she just got home and was going to order food and wanted to know if she should wait for him to eat. He says sorry and tells her if she could save some leftovers that would be nice.