The cemetery peters out into long-weeded lots and listing stone buildings shaggy with vines, all under the sprawling dry shade of ancient black-leaved beeches. Everywhere the cool air is settling gradually toward the earth like dust, tugging almost imperceptibly at me. In the wan light of this drugged day I pick my way through grave wrack tumbled up in lots, broken stone basins filled with clear rain water and brown scum at the bottom like a mat of tea leaves, watched over by stone angels their faces half-lathered with moss.

A sickening recollection of my reason for being in this city washes over me, nearly buckling my knees. These sharp sensations of coolness, quietness, beauty, all to be stolen from me for no reason, for nothing—I don’t even know what this draft is for. Epitaph collage of broken slate and granite tombstones knitted together by the weeds, “Rest In Autumn Loving Wife,” “Where We Shall Be Killed In Fire,” and protracted lines of numbers. The iron-piked wall is interrupted by a partially collapsed house and as this is the only exit that presents itself I part the curtain of vines and enter the house through the wall, setting my feet down with care on the slippery floorboards.

I hear voices near me. In the next room, three mortuary students are throwing dice against the far corner; a fourth lies with his head on a split cushion along another vine-draped hole in the wall, the day’s beaded light gleaming on his long legs and checked vest. He is watching the dice players and smiling. They turn to nod and grin at me, bent cigarettes at their lips, then return their attention to the dice. A fifth student lies nearby in the room’s darkest corner, his outstretched legs crossed at the ankles and his shoulders propped against a door in a deep doorway.

I can see the whites of his eyes, and the dim motions of his face as he speaks.

“As you honor death, buy me a drink!” he calls, smiling. It sounds like a quotation. If I were a wit, I’d know from where and give the countersign.

“I have no money,” I say, pinching at my empty pockets.

“Then you are my brother,” he replies at once, and lithely rolls himself into a crouch with his arms between his knees like a frog, but still sitting on the stone jam of the doorway. His face is round with a slightly tapering chin, skin white as custard and a sharky grin on red baby lips, faded grey irises in eyes like yellowed ivory. Straight pale brown hair bells from his top hat in a bowl cut.

“I’m Jil Punkinflake.” He says this as though he expects me to have heard of him, smiles up at me and offers his hand. “Go ahead and laugh if you like, but it’s my name.”

I don’t laugh, but we smile at each other.

“What’s yours?” he asks.

“Low,” I say.

“Just Low?”