. . .

Running into Kierk in the stairwell Alex considers for a brief second before going in for a solemn hug, followed by the metacognitive shame that he still calculates this stuff with his straight friends. Kierk returns it pretty casually, though Alex can discern just the slightest stiffness to it.

Kierk, as he disengages—“Can you believe it?”

“No. Not at all. I’ve been reading all about it online. I can’t stop. I feel like a freak.”

“Any new information?”

“Just that the operator saw him, and that Atif was laid out on the tracks.”

“Yeah, I read that too. And there was nobody else in the subway.”

Alex glances down at his shoes. “It could have been any one of us. Greg left earlier alone, and Mike and Jessica had already headed out. I think they took a cab. Leon, you, me, and Carmen all got in first. That’s it. We all live north of that place. It was raining. Probably we all would have taken that subway line. And the email from his mother. That hit me. Harder than . . . than I would have thought. Did you respond to it?”

“No. I didn’t know what to say.”

“Me neither. I’ve been spooked, and sad, unbelieving, everything. And now guilty.”

“Do you remember what happened after the cab ride?”

“Actually I don’t. I pretty much remember saying goodbye to Atif and getting into the car with you and Carmen. Didn’t you pee in an alley?”

“Yes. Here’s a question: how is it possible that neither you, nor Carmen, nor I, remember anything beyond getting in the cab?”

“We drank a lot,” Alex says, shaking his head. “Which probably was the reason why Atif . . .”

“Hey, Atif was the one ordering all those drinks anyways. We did shots but he participated in them of his own free will.”

“So you don’t feel responsible.”

“I feel responsible in that his death was counterfactually dependent on us but that’s irrelevant for freak accidents. There’s no mens rea.”

“That’s really how you feel?”

“Sure. Back to the memory thing. Have you talked to Leon?”

“Apparently he remembers leaving but basically nothing afterward until his wife was yelling at him the next morning.”

“Leon’s married?”

“So when other people talk, what is it that you hear?”

“Did he get married today?”

“Ha. Alright, despite how totally un-depressing this conversation has been, I’ve gotta run to a meeting.”

But Alex never gets to the meeting. Rather he ends up lying on a couch in one of the break rooms, staring at the ceiling. He’s back into the cycle of mind he’s been trapped in since he heard, like some crucial border had been staved in between loss and death, death and loss . . .