On the counter, the coffee was brewing; it was sputtering loudly and with abandon. As much as I would have liked to make some headway with regards to the investigation, over and over again I found myself at a standstill. There were the components: the vase of lilies, the brassy hair against the suit jacket, the briefcase on the stool. But, while I could catalogue them, I had greater difficulty fitting them into any larger scheme. Why did I need an empty leather briefcase? Why hadn’t the guest lecturer stayed to chat? These did not appear to be questions that could be answered merely by spending more time thinking about them.

Without warning the figure of Mr. Reinecke came to mind, unbidden, with his head of blond hair and graceful way of moving about the room. I could picture him now, over by the refrigerator, mug of coffee in hand, his eyebrows raised interrogatively.

Just then the coffee maker clicked itself off with an air of quiet triumph.

Tübingen, Tübingen, I whispered softly to myself. Yes, I imagined myself saying. Lovely place, I visited there in the spring of ’85. I felt a sudden pang of loss, as if an opportunity that had been promised to me had just been taken away.

I let myself into my office and raised the blinds, admitting a bleary half-light that bathed the contents of the room in a new kind of dinginess. I had entered the room with every intention of listening to the message on my answering machine, but now I no longer felt capable of such a task. Instead I propped a thick white piece of mail against the telephone so that it obscured the blinking red light. Then I sat for a while, without moving. I had the semiconscious feeling that I was falling prey to the same kind of interlude as I’d experienced yesterday in the break room, another precise little daydream, and from the same period of my life—those days in Ottawa leading up to my withdrawal from medical school.

We’d had an argument in the night, and when I rolled over and reached out in the morning upon waking, I had the disconcerting experience of grasping at empty space: a rumpled sheet and a deserted pillow. We had argued, but still, I thought, as I swung myself around and out of bed, leaving before dawn was a little extreme. I thought I had made it clear that the morning ahead was an important one, and I would have liked some company at breakfast. Still, I was prepared to forgive it. In those days I was in the habit of forgiving a lot.

It was not until I had made myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the tiny table in the kitchen that I noticed the note sitting in front of me.

N, it began.