If it were nighttime, I told her, we’d have to get naked and look at the stars here. We can do that whenever you want, she replied. She had taken off her patch, and her eyelid, sunken and loose, trembled. It’s better in winter. The wind off the river hurts. Every time she spoke, the air filled with the smell of alcohol. If he’s right about there being something in the house, if it’s like he describes, it’s a passage, she said. He wants me to help him cross the threshold and not report anything to the Order. He’s asking a lot. I don’t know why he was so mean to you, I said. I do, she replied. He wants to know how broken I am. I’m going to do it, but I’m scared, because if they find out, they will be merciless. Also, he scares me. I told her there was nothing to fear from Juan and she laughed, she split her sides laughing until I thought she was going to fall into the river: the lights came on in some nearby houses, in protest.

In a low voice, I asked her what was going to be required of us in exchange for moving our consciousnesses into another body. She thought about it, her legs crossed, and asked for a cigarette. The sun, shining down on us just before the blue hour, didn’t bother us. I don’t know, she finally told me, but it will be something obscene. I’ve decided I don’t want it. Her reply surprised me. Who doesn’t want to keep their consciousness alive? Who would refuse being practically immortal? I asked her if she knew that before the Chinese figured out what gunpowder was for, they’d thought it could be used in an immortality elixir. How did they find out they were wrong? she asked me. The most logical way possible: it blew up in their faces, and ever since then they’ve used it in fireworks. And the truth is that when I see particularly beautiful fireworks, I really do feel immortal. You and I are different, she replied.

She put out her cigarette and we went back together.

We waited for Stephen before going through the door. He thought no one else should know, not Tara, not Sandy, not any of our other friends. At least not for now. Juan asked Stephen, as he’d done with me, to open the door. He did, and we saw a normal room, with its bed, its turquoise curtains, its paintings. A sink by the window and then a small bathroom. The English are so absurd, said Stephen. What kind of riffraff puts carpet in a bathroom—it’s clearly not meant to be used, am I right? Juan almost smiled. We left, and Juan closed the door behind us. When he was the one who opened it, there was no longer a bedroom on the other side. No bed or paintings or sink. There was a dark tunnel, like an underpass, the kind you see in train stations. Something lit it, but it didn’t look like electric light. I immediately thought about Arnold van Gennep and Turner and liminal spaces, thresholds, internal or external. Crossroads, bridges, shores. I said nothing. Laura squatted down on her heels.