But where to? He went over to the windows and heaved one up and open.

The street was recognizably their street, or almost: there was a road, and streetlights, but there were no other houses. It was like a desert housing development that had suffered some financial calamity just as construction began. All around in the distance cold sand slid silkily, hissing, over more cold sand. It was night, and instead of light the streetlights poured down rain as if they were weeping. The sky was black, no stars, and the moon was flat and silver: a mirror, reflecting a ghost earth. This wasn’t something he was supposed to see. It was an unfinished sketch of a world, a set that hadn’t been properly dressed.

He shut the window. This workroom had a red door too. He opened it and stepped through.

Now he was getting close to the heart of something, he could feel it. Three levels down, the innermost chamber, the littlest Russian doll—a tiny wooden peg with smeary features, barely a doll at all. This room looked nothing like anything in the townhouse, but he recognized it anyway. The hushed carpet, that warm, fruity smell—a stranger’s house, that he’d only been in once, and that for about fifteen minutes, but it was like he’d never left it. He was back in Brooklyn, thirteen years ago, back at the house where he’d come for his Princeton interview.

It was like he was burrowing deeper into his own mind, back in time, back into his memory. This was where it all began. Maybe if he stuck around he could finally have his interview after all. He could go back and get his master’s degree. Was this really it, or just a simulacrum? Was there another, younger Quentin waiting just outside the door, getting even more depressed than usual as he stood there fretting in the cold rain? And his friend James, young and strong and brave-o? The loops were getting stranger, the time lines were in a Gordian knot, the thick was plottened beyond all recognition.

Or was this a second chance? Was this how to fix her? Change it all so it never happened—rip up the envelope and walk away? He heard the sound of cracking wood, a long way off, in another reality. Two realities up. Last time he was here he went for the liquor cabinet. Lesson learned. He looked around: yes, a grandfather clock, just like in Christopher Plover. It was so obvious now. He opened the case.