“I’m glad I said no,” I said aloud to the photos of sidewalks on the wall. My voice was loud and hollow, as if having no listener had punched a hole in every word.

But then I tried to picture a pretty, ineffectual not-me sitting in the gallery, talking to Ray afterward, and I thought about Gilot and how she refused to be afraid. She didn’t scare at the judgment of her friends and family. She didn’t fear Picasso. She didn’t care if the world rejected her for leaving him. She made her own brave choices.

I slid the Gilot picture to the bottom of the stack, made a mushroom barley soup, and dug around for a Jane Austen novel to read while I spooned up the broth. At twilight, I unlocked my front door, checked the empty street, locked the door again, tugged the handle, went to each window to verify each bolt, and pulled the shades low, as I had done every night since I’d moved in. Then I read more until I dozed, trying to block out the memory of Brenae Brasil’s eyes in the video, how they winced, went blank again, winced, went blank.

6

THE BUZZER WOKE ME, AND I lurched up from the couch, hair matted to my cheek like seaweed. Fumbled with a lamp. It was eight thirty at night. Not too late for a mistaken food delivery.

I pressed the intercom. “Hello?”

“Maggie.” A man’s voice, flattened by the speaker. I couldn’t place it. Then I could. But how did Ray know my address?

“I need your opinion on something.” His words sounded hasty. “Just tonight, I swear. Come with me. You’d be doing me a favor.”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to go anywhere with Ray. Or rather, I wanted to go exactly nowhere with him. Ray was a where I was successfully avoiding.

“It has to do with the Rocque,” he said. “It’s important.”

What could Ray know about the Rocque that I didn’t? I asked him.

“I’d rather not shout it on the street.”

“Fine,” I said. One night. “I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

THE AIR WAS COOL AND dry when I emerged, the sky rubbed orange by thousands of lights, the wind carrying a slight tinge of smoke. I hadn’t been out after dark since the trip to Wonder Valley, and instantly missed the nocturnal openness and possibility of the desert. I missed the way the band’s chords seemed to touch the horizon. Here, every noise layered upon another noise: loud horn, tire screech, the creak of the car door that Ray opened for me.