In the afternoon, despite the umbrella, Owen got soaked heading home. Once there, he made a dinner of a bowl of Frosted Flakes and a banana. To him, cooking was burning, and things rarely turned out edible. Every two weeks, he went to the grocery store, the only time he ever used the car in his parents’ garage, and he’d stop into the Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of town and have a decent meal. Otherwise, he subsisted on frozen pizza, macaroni and cheese, PB&J. Mrs. Hultz, who had him over occasionally for dinner, told him that at thirty-five, it was time to “join the adult world.” Every time he thought about her saying it, he smiled—but as quickly cringed. He didn’t understand what one’s diet had to do with adulthood.

From the time he ate until bed, he was occupied at the kitchen table, having brought out all his boxes of magazines, the scissors, and glue. He hadn’t worked on the project since the day Helen was shot. For the last few years, since he’d quit smoking, he’d been making collages from the figures and scenes of old books and magazines. The goal was a hundred collages. One for every night of a collage story to be called upon completion 100 Nights of Nothing. He’d stolen the idea from the artist Max Ernst after receiving a collage novel at the library—A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil. He thought the cutting of the scissors an appropriate replacement for smoking. With earphones on and classic country music crying in his skull, he toiled away. It took him months to do each page. Singing along to the songs was part of it, and a powerful concentration not even the persistence of nicotine craving could pierce. There was a story to 100 Nights, but Owen had yet to discover what it was.

He slept and suddenly found himself on a corner in town. He had no idea why he was there or how he got there, but the wind was high and the single streetlight half a block away made it darker than if it didn’t exist. He heard somebody coming from the west, dragging their feet, making slow progress. Owen worried it might be a member of the solar cross gang, coming for him. Adrenaline exploded in him and he tried to run, but his legs were too tired, as if they’d turned to stone. Instead, he backed up against the brick wall of an abandoned factory. The figure passed beneath the streetlight, an old shambling man, carrying on like a television zombie. When the stranger was upon him, he realized it was his father, or his father’s corpse or ghost, and it said in an everyday tone, “This is a dream. You want to go back.”