THAT NIGHT we lie facing each other on a fresh white sheet on a low, wide bed in her flat in an old tulip warehouse in the East End. Immediately above the loft is a roof garden where my dancing Amazon lives among silvery grasses swaying in the night breeze, bougainvillea flowers reach for the stars, and a flower bed blooms like a Breton meadow in summer.

By the light of countless candles we gaze silently at each other and explore each other’s bodies with our eyes. Both of us long for affection, but we are unable to bridge the distance between us because with affection comes anxiety. A hankering for distance. A shared desire not to be “we.” And yet this irresolvable yearning binds us closer to each other than to anyone else.

At one point she closes her eyes, smiles, and lays her hand on the sheet between us. I put mine on hers. That night I sleep soundly in the knowledge that I’m in the safest place in the world.

DAY THIRTY-FOUR

Henri

I wake up as the plane from Vancouver touches down at Heathrow five minutes ahead of schedule. My hand feels numb, and yet I have pins and needles. It sounds as if the plane engine is wheezing as we taxi toward the gate. I’m thirsty, but there’s no flight attendant in sight.

London is shrouded in a morning fog that divides the world of the nightwalkers—I used to be one of these people who restlessly pace the dark streets—from the world of those who rise early to go to work. Two parallel worlds that ignore each other on the buses and in the tube and the steaming early-morning bakeries where they rub shoulders.

The nightwalkers dare not entertain the thought that another day of their lives is already over, and so they extend it into the dark hours so they never have to stop. Early risers, on the other hand, want to make the most of the day that lies ahead.

I know where to find the key to Eddie’s flat, which is the same one that unlocks the doors to the goods lift and her offices. It’s in the cavity behind a half brick in a wall in the yard, in the left cheek of a graffiti Bugs Bunny.

I’m always afraid that the key won’t be there waiting for me as a sign that I’m no longer welcome. I don’t know why I’m so scared, for Eddie would never do anything like that—or at least not in that fashion. She would meet my eye and tell me. She is the most reliable, most candid person I know.