I thank her for her support and return to my desk, a cubicle in the middle of a sea of other cubicles. The only thing that distinguishes mine from my subordinates’ is that I have a little round table and two visitors’ chairs. Carrie looks at me from across the room through the enormous glass panels that surround her office. I give her a nod and wait a beat or two for the rest of my team to begin coming, one by one, offering condolences, telling me that, like Carrie, they are there for me.

They don’t even know me, though they pretend to. They laugh at my jokes as though I were the funniest man on the planet. They listen to my suggestions as if I just redefined how we were going to beat the competition to Mars—and do it cheaper than anyone could have ever dreamed. They always smile at me. Bring me coffee. Cookies too.

I’m sure they don’t even like me. Not much anyway. They do it for the same reason I bang Carrie LaCroix.

Ben Walker pokes his head into my cubicle.

“Sorry about Sophie, dude,” he says.

“Thanks, Ben,” I say.

“Can I have next Tuesday off?” he asks. “Have a chance to catch some waves in Maui.”

I give him a quick nod. “Sure, man,” I say, in a way that mocks his surfer speak. He’s too clueless to get it, though.

My wife is dead. My life is turned upside down. And my boss wants to fuck me. And my right-hand man wants to go to Maui, man.

Just what I expected.

Nothing I do after Sophie’s death should matter to anyone, I think, as I watch the top of Carrie LaCroix’s head and her eyes looking up at me with a gaze of admiration. We skipped the after-work drinks. We’re in her bedroom in the subdivision she calls home in Renton. I haven’t been there in a while, but a drawer full of condoms indicates that others have. My hand touches my belly, and I think that I need to lose a few as her head bobs and I ejaculate. She’s a spitter, not a swallower, which is fine.

“I’ve missed you,” Carrie says, sliding up my naked body and propping herself up with a ridiculously frilly pillow from some outlet store. That was one good quality about Sophie. She didn’t do the girly-girl bit. I never had to shove a teddy bear off the bed when we had sex.

“Missed you too,” I say, though I haven’t even thought of her like that since she figuratively screwed me over with her Ethics Department complaint. But then again, I’m a wreck, and I feel like I’m spinning out of control. Sophie is dead, and I’m pissed off at her. Carrie is there. Ready. Just like always.