Truman stretched out on the bed, knocking over the wine bottle he’d just emptied. He reached for it, grabbed it by the neck, and then overbalanced and slowly slid to the floor in a drunken slither that he was extremely glad no one was there to witness.

“Yeah,” he said to no one. “Probably no one will ever be here to see me do anything ever again cuz people are bad. Bad, bad. They’re bad.”

He nodded emphatically and regretted it instantly as his head started to spin. Groaning, he let his head fall gently to the floor. He could just sleep here. Half under the bed was basically like being in bed, right? Yup.

Greta’s house was darling. It was small with white clapboard siding and well-worn wood floors. The walls were all white, and there were mirrors and reflective surfaces everywhere that caught the sunlight and threw it around the house.

And every single thing seemed set up for the benefit of plants, not people. There were humidifiers, heaters, grow lights, and a complicated spreadsheet of when each thing should be turned on, turned off, angled, or rotated.

It was a lot, but Truman respected a good spreadsheet.

He’d followed her instructions when he first arrived, then walked into the town square, which was only five blocks away. There he had gathered provisions: three bottles of wine, five kinds of cheese, two kinds of crackers, and four kinds of chocolate, which was all the kinds of wine, cheese, crackers, and chocolate that Muskee’s General Store carried.

In just the time it had taken to walk to the store, Truman had already been freezing. Maine, it turned out, was cold. Truman knew this, naturally, but somehow, in the flurry of packing, hiding a key, writing instructions for Greta, and returning Guy’s Christmas gift, that knowledge hadn’t translated into warm enough clothes.

He’d layered his light autumn jacket atop a button-down shirt and a thin cashmere sweater and looped a woven scarf around his neck, but the wind had blown through it all ten steps down the road, and his shoes were soaked with snow immediately.

By the time he made it home with his groceries, Truman was colder than he could ever remember being. So he’d shucked his clothes, taken the wine, cheese, crackers, and chocolate into bed, pulled the duvet up to his chin, and commenced to spend the evening in a haze of cheese, booze, and the Dead of Zagørjič.

He had read the series so many times over the years that he could open to any page in any of the seven books and know exactly what was going on. Often, he read his favorite bits to cheer himself up.