“I’m handcuffed to the bed,” I say suddenly, and as I say it, I realize that it’s true. It’s my right hand, and the other side is fastened to my bedpost. For a moment I am less certain that this is Ann and Gerry’s house, but I push this thought aside.

The old man’s eyes flick to the handcuffs, but still he doesn’t speak.

“But that makes sense,” I say, trying my best to fill the silence. “I killed someone.”

For a second the man’s face experiences a little stutter, and freezes. But then he recovers, recovers himself totally, and raises one eyebrow as if to say, Oh, really? Whom?

“That’s an interesting question,” I reply, as if he had asked it out loud. “It’s sort of hard to say. Could have been one of three people.”

But that’s not quite right. And then a new, unrelated thought pushes to the surface: Could it be, as I am in Ann and Gerry’s house, that this old man is Ann’s father?

It is true that he looks nothing like he did at Thanksgiving. This man, the one sitting in the chair in front of me, seems more robust, but it is not outside the realm of possibility.

“I’ve known Ann and Gerry for years, a long time,” I say ingratiatingly, hoping this will get a response.

Nothing.

“We were neighbors, in graduate student housing,” I say. “It’s funny how the mind works, I can barely remember that apartment now.”

It was true. I can barely remember it now, the apartment where they’d been my neighbors. I had had the mistaken impression that my father would meet me there when I arrived. Why, I don’t know; I can see now that it was an illogical expectation. I can’t remember now who it was who handed over the keys, who walked me through those unmemorable rooms, but it was not my father.

In fact, I saw him only once, I’m fairly certain, after my arrival at the university and before his death. It was early in the morning, the first truly cold morning of autumn, and the grass on the Oval was silvered with frost. I was walking towards the main quad, wishing I had worn a thicker jacket, when I saw my father standing beside the Burghers of Calais, whose figures, I saw, had been wrapped head-to-toe in burlap and rope, a bizarre sight.

Neither he nor I made any gesture, though I am certain he saw me. Our eyes met. Then the moment passed and he turned back to his companions, a well-dressed man and woman whom he seemed to be leading on a tour.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My most sincere thanks to Rebecca Curtis, my first, best writing teacher. Thank you to Paul LaFarge, Victor LaValle, and Ben Marcus for their guidance.