A group passes her second-story apartment and their conversation breaks her from her meditative state. Stretching, lissome, she reaches over to the bookshelf and reshelves the book of letters, then says aloud to her apartment—“Whatever, I’m still alive”—and gets up to pull on her pants. Checking her phone she sees that Kierk called but judges it’s too late to call him back now, and she can’t decide if she’s angry or pleased that he called. She pulls a shirt over her head, still braless, at this point unable to bring herself to give a shit whether it will turn see-through in any kind of harsh lighting. Shuffling on her sandals and grabbing her purse she heads out into the wasting heat of the night to get frozen yogurt and take a walk while it melts, to perform those small daily things which are the rituals that separate the living from the dead.

And it is there she will resolve to do all she can to answer the question that has been put to her.

MONDAY

Kierk wakes up fully aware and feeling an urgent need to move. Rising, flipping sheets onto the floor, he does a set of exercises until he is panting red. Breathing deeply in the bathroom light he looks at himself. He’s always been able to put on muscle quickly, filling out his frame to its natural proportions. Patting his taut stomach he goes to shower. Under the water he soaps himself, pausing when he gets to his hip. Its bruise is in full bloom, still painful from his collision with the turnstile, and it is only then that he remembers everything that had happened over the weekend.

Kierk limps his way to the CNS, an occasional hand going down to check his hip. Upon arrival he finds the halls eerily bustling, graduate students and technicians waiting for the animal elevators, the professors and administrative staff energetically popping in and out of rooms in what all seems a rude assault on mortality. It was as if Atif’s death had never occurred. Karen waves at him as he walks in, as does Carmen, but she doesn’t get up from her computer. His hip is so bad that he nearly lets out a yelp when he sits at his desk. He checks his email and, besides the unanswered one from Atif’s mother that he avoids opening again, finds only a bland departmental missive detailing a “tragedy among the staff.” It goes on to give a short biography of Atif and express its deepest condolences. He spends a while looking up the few short articles pertaining to Atif’s death on local news websites. There is nothing on there that Carmen hadn’t told him, just a low-resolution close-up of Atif’s grinning face. There is no mention of the police, or any investigation.