I waited. Each goose bump on my still-damp body multiplied by dozens, and my nose began to itch. I wondered if my feet would leave footprints in the plush rug. I was just looking for an extra towel, I mouthed. It sounded weak to me, especially when I imagined uttering it to Layla’s sly, glittering gaze. Better to hide. I counted to sixty. The noise did not repeat. Turning, feeling every inch of my exposed spine, I reached my hand into the back of the closet (blank wall), shut the door again, checked under the bed (more dust bunnies), then peered into the hall. It was empty.

Nothing about Nelson’s bedroom suggested secrets, just the life of a meticulous bachelor who didn’t have a very good house cleaner. There was one more door on the hall besides the bathroom, and I paused there, wondering if I should risk it. How long had I been gone?

A doorbell rang downstairs. “More delivery,” shouted Zania.

I tested the knob. Unlocked. The door opened soundlessly. I stood on the threshold, stunned.

Glass cases lined every wall but the far one, each lit inside, each holding objects. In the closest case was a red guitar, propped on a stand, and a punk leather suit zipped up over a mannequin. A handwritten note from a rock star cheerily thanked Nelson for repping him. In the next case, a crumpled metal sculpture and a stained pillow also came with thank-you notes. In the next, a chunk of wall, splashed with bright graffiti, perched next to a clock made out of some pastel foreign currency. More notes, presumably from other famous artists.

It looked like one of those restaurants where the owner hangs up hundreds of photos of himself shaking the hands of celebrities. A trophy room.

No, that wasn’t quite it.

The lighting was too dim. The vitrines both illuminated and shrouded. More like a place of worship. A shrine.

And there were cameras here. Two. Aimed from the ceiling at the cases. I looked around for Kim Lord. A portrait, a signature. Nelson would have something of hers.

As I stood, unmoving, I felt Brenae’s eyes across the room before I saw them. There she was, in a framed print, staring. It was a video still from Packing, the cereal-eating scene, the gun in Brenae’s hand, raised just below her parted mouth, its silver tip dripping white milk. Brenae’s eyes were half shut, as if she had just looked up from her private hunger to see the viewer watching her. The image was so sexual and intimate that it made a wave of heat spread through me. At the bottom, a white space had a block of type on it, and a quick handwritten scrawl below, but I couldn’t read either from across the room.