I considered several bodies but kept moving, hoping for something better. At last, I stopped. I had seen “my guy.” Or rather, he had seemed to choose me. Stocky and as classically handsome as any sculpture in the British Museum, he was neither white nor dark but lightly toasted, with a fine, thick penis and heavy balls. I would, at last, have the body of an Italian footballer: an aggressive, attacking midfielder, say. My face resembled that of the young Alain Delon with, naturally, my own brain leading this combination out to play for six months.

“That’s him,” I said, across the lines of bodies. “My man. He looks fine. We like each other.”

“Do you want to see his eyes?” said the nurse, who’d been waiting by the door. “You’d better.”

“Why not?”

“Look, then,” she said.

She pried open my man’s eyelids. The room was scrupulously odorless, but as I moved closer to him I detected an antiseptic whiff. However, I liked him already. For the first time, I would have dark brown eyes.

“Lovely.” I considered patting him on the head, but realized he would be cold. I said to him, “See you later, pal.”

On the way out, I noticed another heavy, locked door. “Are there more in there? Is that where they keep the second-division players?”

“That’s where they keep the old bodies,” she said. “Your last facility will be in there.”

“Facility?” I asked. The necessity for euphemism always alerted me to hidden fears.

“The body you’re wearing at the moment.”

“Right. But only for a bit.”

“For a bit,” she repeated.

“No harm will come to it in there, will it?”

“How could it?”

“You won’t sell it?”

“Er … why should we?” She added, “No disrespect intended. If, after six months, you change your mind, or you just don’t turn up, we will nullify the facility, of course.”

“Right. But I would like to see where I’m going to be hanging out—or up, rather.”

I moved toward the door of this room. The porter barred my way with his strong arm.

The nurse said, “Confidential.”

Ralph intervened. “It’s unlikely, Adam, but you might know the people. Some say they’re emigrating, others ‘seem’ to have died. Others have disappeared, but they come here and reemerge as Newbodies.”

“How much of this ‘coming and going’ is there about?” I asked.

Ralph didn’t reply. I felt myself becoming annoyed.

I said, “It is curious, inquisitive types like me you claimed you wanted as ‘initiates.’ Now you won’t answer my questions.”

“Be a patient patient. Soon you’ll have as much time on your hands as you could want. You will come to understand much more then.” He embraced me. “I’ll leave you now. I will visit you when it’s done.”

“I’ll feel like a new man.”

“That’s right.”