He heard him come in around seven-thirty. Andre was still on the bed. Dim light, Beth’s perfume in the air. Pleasant, actually. He had this theory that if you turn your thoughts off, occupy someone else’s space, that’s the closest you could get to a body swap—to living as another person. Because what’s the content of a life other than the content of the head? So what you do, you think of nothing, and lie on someone’s bed and see what they see when they wake up in the morning. And if there’s nothing on your mind, you’re the same as them—just for that blank half instant before they realise who they are. He’d had to think about that.

Lou’s room had gone quiet, and he could hear Sly moving around the house. Thump of him hitting the sofa, and then TV voices from the living room—The Sopranos, maybe. Snatches of New Jersey accent—hard and affronted. Andre lay there for a while, listening, thinking about how to play it.

Sly must have heard the news already. He kept getting up and going to the kitchen and then dropping back on the sofa. Cushion springs, footsteps, cushion springs: sounds of a man getting more and more worried—thinking he might be implicated. There would be other noises, too: hands raked through hair, teeth on fingernail, whatever sound blood pressure made as it slowly rose. The dials of biology winding up, closing in on the red line: some Chernobyl-grade medical event.

He heard a kitchen drawer roll open and bang shut, and then the soft glide of the sliding door—the one that accessed the pool. A tick as it closed again, and now the only sound was the TV in the living room.

Andre figured now was the time to see how Sly was doing. He found him standing by the pool, looking at the water, one hand on his hip and a cigar in the other, twitching slightly between his fingers. He didn’t even smoke, let alone smoke cigars. That was the problem with him watching TV: he’d have a session in front of The Sopranos and then start imitating the main guy—Tony—thinking that’s how you look like a gangster.

He turned around as Andre came outside, and now the cigar was aiming at him, arm’s length, the eye behind it with its brow raised. He had both nostrils plugged with tissue, and Andre wondered about the story behind that.

Sly said, ‘Hey. The fuck have you been?’ Voice funny with his blocked nostrils—a high buzz to it.

Andre just watched him smoke. He drew deep, but then convulsed mid-pull, a shocked look coming over him. He bent forward and put his hands on his knees, gave a few lung-cracking coughs. He stayed hunched for a second after they subsided, eased himself upright with a tender breath through pursed lips.