But he hadn’t died, all he’d done was sleep, though he didn’t know how long. His mind had drifted for a while, out of one kind of darkness and into another, like he was walking through a house without lights; and with nothing to look at now, he had no way to get his bearings. He couldn’t tell up from down. He hurt all over and his tongue felt like a balled-up sock in his mouth, or some strange furry animal, burrowing there. The back of his neck, where it met his shoulder blades, was humming with pain. He lifted his head to look around, but all he could see were some little points of light—red lights, like the one on the pen. He couldn’t tell how far away they were or how big. They could have been the lights of a distant city for all he knew.

Wolgast: the name floated up to his mind out of the darkness. Something about Wolgast, that thing he’d said, about time being like an ocean and his to give. I can give you all the time in the world, Anthony. An ocean of time. Like he knew what was in the deepest place of Carter’s heart, like they hadn’t just met but had known each other for years. Nobody had talked to Anthony like that for as long as he could remember.

It made him think of the day that had started it all, like the two were of a piece. June: it was June; he remembered that. June, the air under the freeway sizzling hot, and Carter, standing in a wedge of dirty shade and holding his cardboard sign over his chest—HUNGRY, ANYTHING WILL HELP, GOD BLESS YOU—had watched as the car, a black Denali, drew up to the curb. The passenger window opened: not just the usual crack, so whoever was inside could pass him a few coins or a folded bill without their fingers even touching his, but gliding all the way down in a single, liquid motion, so that Carter’s reflection in the window’s dark tint fell like a curtain in reverse—like a hole had opened in the world, revealing a secret room within. The hour was just noon, the lunchtime traffic building on the surface roads and on the West Loop, which banged in a tight rhythm over his head, like a long clicking line of freight cars.

“Hello?” the driver was calling. A woman’s voice, straining over the roar of cars and the echoing acoustics under the freeway. “Hello there? Sir! Excuse me, sir!”