I roused myself, got out of bed, put on my robe, and went into the kitchen to make a plate of toast. I was down to the heel of the loaf and its sad, curving neighbor; it took several attempts to make them look at all appealing. I sat down to eat at the table facing the bay window. As I chewed, I noticed that a glossy black bird with a yellow beak had landed on the lawn and was bobbing along through the grass, its beady eye trained on the ground below. It reminded me of something, though I could not remember what.

So many days and nights had passed without event, really, and then, all of a sudden, so much in one night. Though it was true that I had slept in the comfort of my own bed and been out of the house for only five or six hours, all told, I felt exhausted, like someone recently returned from an extended trip overseas.

From down the hallway I heard the muffled trill of my alarm clock—I had forgotten to turn it off. I went back into the bedroom to flip the switch, and then, seeing the pants I’d worn the night before draped over my chair, I reached into the right-hand pocket and extracted the folded sheet of letter paper I’d retrieved from the guest lecturer’s hotel room desk. Here was the proof, I thought, that I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing!

I took it back with me to the kitchen, where I opened the drawer underneath the telephone and took out the piece of hotel notepaper I’d taken from my father’s coat at the open house. With my palm I smoothed them both flat. As I’d suspected, except for the appointment—Saturday, 10 am, MC—they were identical. Two steeples, two simple crosses. With my index finger, I traced first one, and then the other.

Through the window, I could see the black bird was scratching madly in the dirt, a ball of frenzied determination, though whatever it was he had in his sights seemed perpetually out of reach. Inside my slippers my feet were clammy, and the two pieces of hotel stationery beside the telephone stared blankly at me, mockingly. Well, they seemed to say, so what? What exactly did your little escapade uncover? That your father stayed the night in a hotel? That the hotel still uses the same kind of stationery? That the hotel’s traditional exterior belies an incongruous, Euro-modern lobby? What are you going to do—make a complaint about interior design?

Without warning, my thoughts skipped to the briefcase under the desk, the buttery feel of its leather, its macabre contents. What about that? The sticky residue? The strange quality of the darkness?