October took a bite of cheese, then caught my eyes, paused there for a moment, and nodded slowly. “Pretty sure I could if I tried.”

I shook my head—I think I’d meant for that gesture to be imperceptible, but October saw it, and took it as a challenge.

“You don’t believe me,” she said, not a question but a declaration.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just that it sounds impossible.”

“Give me your hand.”

I wiped my fingers off on my napkin and slid my hand across the table. October reached over and rested her palm flat on my forearm. Then she scooted to the edge of her seat, extended her leg, and pressed her right calf into my left one.

She closed her eyes, and her breath stretched out like taffy on a long, slow inhale and an even longer, slower exhale. I watched her closely and could see her tiny ribcage and chest moving up and down rhythmically, six seconds in and eight seconds out.

There was an intense heat in her touch. I felt my heartbeat quicken, and I fought against becoming aroused. I hadn’t had that kind of reaction to a woman in a long time, and as I looked across the table, I had this silly, adolescent vision of making a playlist of my favorite songs and playing it for October on a long drive up the coast.

After about a minute October lifted her hand, opened her eyes, and sat back in her chair. Then she took out her phone and showed me a short video of her second Living Exhibit, Solitary, in which she had aimed to exist without art. She’d spent two weeks locked in a tiny, gray studio apartment in an art gallery, where a two-way-mirrored wall allowed museum visitors to see what was going on inside the room and gave the viewer the impression of watching a human diorama come to life.

October lived alone and in silence inside that box for fourteen days. She had no music, no television, no books, no pencils, no paint, no color, no scents, and saw no other humans. She didn’t even cook her own food, because she believes cooking is an art too. By the end of the video her big eyes were dull and her usually vibrant face was pallid and drawn. She looked like half a person.

“I felt like a ghost,” she said, “like I didn’t exist.”

I got nauseous thinking about it. That was how I felt almost every day.

I looked away, drank the rest of the wine in my glass, and poured myself some more.

“Joe . . .” October said.

I shook my head. Shut down. Reverted to the lamest possible version of myself as I stabbed a piece of squash with my fork and wished I were somewhere else.

I could feel October staring at me, and after a while she said, “You know what hit me the hardest once I left that room? The smells. As soon as I walked outside, all these odors struck me—trash, gasoline, food, the Bay, the perfumes and scents of people walking by. I swore I could even smell the eucalyptus trees in the park, and they were over a mile away. It was like I’d developed some kind of superhuman sense of smell. When I got back to Mill Valley, it was even more intense. I’d only lived here for a couple of months at that point, and you know, this town smells like heaven anyway, but it really smells like heaven if you’ve been in limbo for two weeks. I remember getting out of the car and walking to the biggest redwood in the yard. You know the one between the house and the garage?”