On another piece of paper Herk draws a picture that appears to be the state of Iowa and changes as he continues working into, possibly, a shabby spermatozoon and then, finally, with the addition of an unmistakable set of feet and ears and “hair,” into the semblance of a rat. He zooms the Rat Burglar target out to half distance.

“I don’t want to fingerfuck fun, Herk.”

“What’s up, sweetiehons? You’re tired, you’re stressed, you’ve got a headache, and on top of everything you’re getting your period?”

A little too casually for comfort, Herk puts down the gun— still loaded—and I tell him about the scene on the sidewalk. I even extract the ring box from my pocket and open it for him. I put it on the surface next to the gun, where the matte-black gun and the open clamshell of the velvety box and the idiotic, nonstop full-volume glare of the ring’s refraction make a strange tableau—one that makes me momentarily consider shooting the diamond at point-blank range.

The confession does not elicit from Herk the surprise I had anticipated. In fact, he merely sighs and clenches his teeth, making hard walnuts of muscle contract at his jawline.

“I didn’t want to tell you this, Otto. I thought maybe I was wrong or that . . . I don’t know. Sometimes things aren’t what they look like. And I could be totally wrong. Maybe it’s nothing. Probably it is nothing. What the hell do I know? But . . . I guess you had better take a look at this.”

A hand goes into a pocket and comes out with the digital camera.

“I was out with a Goldfish the other day and fucking around, you know, taking some pics, and then I saw this woman with this guy. I couldn’t be sure it was her, you know, from the pictures you’ve showed me, but I just had this feeling, so I sort of eavesdropped a little bit—sorry, man; I just needed to know, thought you deserved to know—and I heard the guy say the name ‘Charlie’ and I knew I was right. I sort of drifted away and I don’t know if I did the right thing or not, but now that you’re telling me about what she did when you tried to say what you were going to say on the sidewalk and everything—”

“Herk, what are you talking about?”

He hands me the camera. On the screen is a picture of Charlie coming out of the door of a building with a guy with a beard and a turban dyed to the same sky-blue color as his shirt.

“Do you know this guy?” Herk asks.

I want this to be nothing. I need this to be nothing. And so I say, very defensively, as if it explained everything, “I can’t know all of Charlie’s friends.”