I hated that they were hiding a room from me. I missed Isaac’s squat, the cat-torn corduroy couch on the porch, the loft beds with granny-square blankets in garish polyester, the walls adorned with paintings of centaurs and rats, the kitchen ceiling a bramble of Christmas lights and drying herbs and dusty feathers, the roof and porch swing always occupied by smokers, the mosquito coils, the incense, the sage, the palo santo, the hornet infestation, the bath with its border of hundreds of melted-down red candles, the freight train’s loud breathy whistle, the play parties during which Isaac and I hid out in his narrow white room, just listening. In Isaac’s squat, nothing was off-limits. I tried the locked door again.

“My friend!” someone called behind me.

It was the black-haired man who’d stared at me during breakfast. He said his name was Gemini. He was emaciated, crouched, in his thirties maybe. “Welcome,” he said, smiling at the window, the ceiling. “Dice wants to show you around the property,” he said. “You’re lucky. Sometimes people wait days to meet him.” We sat on the wide-planked floor.

“So what’s your story?” I said. I wanted a name like Gemini. I was envious of the confidence it signaled.

“My story?” he said. “There’s no such thing as the definite self.” He shrugged and smiled at the ceiling. “Dice will teach you how to see things fresh.” He stood and repositioned a shank—deer, probably—that hung, drying, from a beam. He sat next to me again. “Are you cold?”

He hadn’t looked at me yet. “Yes,” I said. “I’m cold.”

Gemini sprang up, relieved, it seemed, to have a task. He pulled a wicker bin out from under one of the bunks. He tossed me a high-necked taupe sweater constructed of thick waxy yarn. “Raw wool,” he said. “Repels more water than a slicker.” He tossed me a pair of black work trousers. I couldn’t tell if the knees were moth-eaten or worn down from labor. He found a pair of boots. “Put them on,” he said.

“Now?” I said.

“Are you embarrassed?” he said, finally raising his gaze to me. There was something canny in his look. I took off my jeans.

A man came into the room, and I hurriedly buttoned up the pants. I knew it was Dice before I looked up.

He was a small man with a slow smile. He was not a hippie. Not a professor. Not a priest. Not any of the ways I’d pictured him. Instead, he was a boxer. He seemed to have his fists up against the world. I couldn’t read his expression, whether he was assessing or prowling or lost in thought. I did not notice when Gemini vanished.