Elza got up and went to the refrigerator. “Wine?” She poured two glasses of white wine and a small glass of vermouth for herself. Bunched them together in two hands and brought them over to the coffee table. “I’m kind of torn,” she said. “Maybe go out to the Galápagos early, do some snorkeling.”

Dustin held his glass up to her. “I’ll catch up with you. Say good-bye to London and Paris, maybe Kyoto. Come from the other direction.”

“City boy.”

“Don’t care much for the water. Fish fuck in it.”

She arched an eyebrow. “People do, too.”

“I’ll wait for zero gee.” He looked at me. “You’ve been there.”

“It was all men. None of them appealed to me.”

“I mean the Galápagos. Diving.”

“Wasn’t recreational. Bomb threat to the Elevator.”

“I remember. The note said something about Gehenna.”

“Someone in Personnel must have sat down and entered Gehenna/ skindive/license to kill.”

Elza sighed. “And I’m still on my learners’ permit.”

“Well, you’ve got four days. I could get you a quick transfer to the Zone. You’d get more experience in four days than I’ve had in twenty years.”

“I’ll think about it. Did you see many fish there?”

“Not so many pretty ones. You want to go into the shallows, the reefs near the shore, unless you’re after big sharks.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“They’re protected. If one bites you and gets sick, there’s a huge fine.”

“But you were there before,” Dustin said.

“Twenty-five years ago, first wife. I could hardly get her out of the water, sharks and all.”

“You think of her a lot,” she said.

I tried to be accurate. “Her image comes to me often. I don’t sit and dwell on the memory of her.”

“I know that. I guess that’s what I meant.” She shook her head. “Crazy time.”

“We’re all dwelling on the past these days,” Dustin said. “Leaving everything behind.”

There was so much I didn’t want to say. She gave me the Shakespeare book in the morning; at noon, she took one breath and died. Was it more or less horrible that it happened to so many at the same time?

“You’re the philosopher,” I said. “I’m more an engineer, cause and effect.” Elza was watching me closely. I don’t think I’d ever raised this directly with her before. “We were crazy in love, like schoolkids, and although I know it was all blood chemistry boiling away, brain chemistry . . . still, we were addicted to each other, the sight and sound and smell of each other, like a heroin addict to his junk . . .”

“Been there,” Elza said.

“But you never lost anyone the way I lost her. Like a sudden traumatic amputation—worse, because you can buy a new arm or leg, and it will do.”

“So that’s what I am? Your—”

“No. It’s not simple.”

She picked at a nail, concentrating. “I had a friend lost a leg before she was twenty, AP mine in Liberia. She said the new one did everything she asked it to. But it was never really part of her. Just an accessory.” She stood up. “I better pack some clothes.” She put her glass in the refrigerator and went into the bedroom.