“How are you sleeping? Do you wake up all night long?”

He looked up from his raggedy, slimy project, surprised and blank. “No, I’ve always slept well. I’m not sore any more. The stitches itch.”

Ariel was nowhere in his mind. Polly stared at Graham’s face and felt the room slow down again, the music moving into her brain. If your world is a monster, she thought.

“You look like you’re going to throw up,” said Graham.

Polly added two onions to his cutting board. He would reduce them to horse teeth and slimy mince. He wasn’t a natural talent. “I’ll be right back.”

She pushed through the kitchen door. The restaurant proper was closed, and on the far side of the dark room, shining as if framed, she saw her family in the bright sunlight of the sidewalk. Maude, in a folding chair, was being greeted by a succession of people, Jane hunched on the curb with the children, drawing something again to keep them amused. The parade never started on time.

She ran back toward Graham, grabbed four glasses and a bottle of Champagne. “Take these to my mother and father.”

He remembered Ariel now. “I can’t. People hate me.”

Man up, she thought, but how was Graham supposed to feel, when he was alive and Ariel was dead? Not feeling guilty would be hateful. She looked him over. He was a machine, an athlete with a tapered torso and a sulky mouth. He should have saved Ariel, and she knew, she knew, that Ariel would never have willingly kissed those lips.

“Just go.”

His expression barely changed but she felt the hate blowing right through the freckles. She watched him navigate the crowd, pale and gouged. Graham wished he were invisible. Polly wished he were, too. He kept his head down, and no one but her family even looked. Of the ten thousand people watching this parade, a fraction knew a girl was floating in the river. Ariel updates were now tucked inside the paper, on page three.

A siren a block away, followed by the honk of bagpipes, signaled the beginning of the parade.

“Remember when Graham was little, and he seemed like a sensitive kid?” she said to Ned, in the alley. He was carving the pig, and he gave her a piece of perfect skin.

“I imagine he still thinks he is,” said Ned.

Out on the street, Polly crouched by her children and blinked in the sunlight.

“You have blood on your apron,” said Sam.

Polly took it off. Kids milled in the street, craning to see around the corner. The floats and marchers ginned up enthusiasm by hurling candy at the crowds.

Jane nodded to Helen, who’d scored two suckers and given the parade up to draw in a notebook. “She said she knew where to find Ariel. Have you been talking to her?”