I stayed at the Bystander for another few issues. I didn’t take on assignments, I just helped out where I could, writing captions and headlines like an unpaid intern. When I finally tendered my resignation, Mort wasn’t in a position to grieve it. He knew the magazine was close to folding. In a year’s time the writers he’d so carefully collected would be scattered across New York and London. The magazine would become a rumor, as if it never was, until The Complete Bystander bound it back together. And by then, he was dead.

When my money ran out—I’d insisted Mort keep the withheld check, pathetic recompense for all the company dollars I’d squandered—I called Sandra Hart at Diamond Communications and made the transition to my journalistic afterlife. Since then, I’ve stood by and watched the wars never ending, the markets collapsing, the summers getting hotter and hotter.

Every now and then, unable to resist, I’ve spied on the story through the Internet. The cities I visited in pursuit of Dr. Kriss were among the hardest hit by the housing bubble’s bursting. In the case of just one house at the Glades, you can trace its fate through public records, as JPMorgan Chase foreclosed on it and sold it to BNY Mellon before ownership passed from Countrywide to Bank of America to Nationstar. Today, you can buy it for practically nothing. There’s a silence over the Tomahawk. Traffic pours over Mimico.

I’ve never found a trace of Dr. Kriss, but sometimes I creep with her. She’s wrapped herself in a blanket and sits out on the balcony. Sparkling water fizzes in the glass, a falcon floats above her. She peers across a glacial lake. There’s the smell of pine, a splash of oars. In another minute, the doctor will go in. The subject is waiting on the table.

7.

The other day, I passed through the underground garage. All the units in my building have sold, but hardly anyone actually lives here and the garage is always empty. I don’t know whether the city cut a deal with the building, or whether the workers just found a way to sneak down there, but ever since winter hit, they’ve been plowing snow off the streets and down into the garage. Now, in the center of the lot, there’s one tall berg of hard, blackened snow.

I’m seated on my couch, all hair and fingernails. I could open the seam on my wrist, let the story perish in the air. It would all be over in minutes; there is no solution. But after last time, I don’t trust myself to let it run. I know I’ll call for help.

I think instead of the snow’s cold weight and I’m up from the couch, through my door, heading down the hall toward the elevator.