“I think there’s been some kind of miscommunication, somewhere along the line. Is someone … dead? You seem—have you had a loss recently?” said Professor Pindar. I could barely see him in the glare of the sunlight, but I could not mistake his tone.

Had I had a loss recently? I had moved to the door as if to go, but now I found myself turning back to consider the question. I looked over, casually, at Professor Pindar, who seemed to have shrunk against the wall.

“Have I had a loss?” I said softly, not quite to myself, not quite to Professor Pindar, but somewhere in between. “Life is just one loss after another, is it not?”

I could not even begin to say, I thought, the kind of loss I’ve experienced, of everything moving forward as I stood still.

26

My face in the elevator’s mirror wore a grim, persistent smile, as if ready for an unkind word. Rather than shift it, I looked away. We dropped from the second floor to the first, and then to the basement level: the doors opened, and I stepped out into the atrium, the square-shaped, open core of the building, where a strangled sunlight filtered down from five stories above.

I had no strong sense of what I’d meant to do there. Now I moved toward the sad coffee cart in the corner, with its depressed barista and depressing simulacra of patio furniture, but then changed course and turned away—but not quite soon enough to avoid making eye contact with a group of postdocs from my own department, who, I was horrified to see, were seated at one of the wrought-iron tables. There was a quick, painful moment of recognition, and then a much longer one of limbo, as I stood there, unable to proceed. At last one young man, a midwesterner whose name I had forgotten, raised his hand in a small, uncertain wave. Behind me I heard the soft ding! of a microwave. Startled, I waved back. Then, overcome with embarrassment, I hurried off down one of the low-ceilinged corridors that spread warren-like from the atrium’s central court.

I let myself into the first empty room, a lecture hall in the old style, with steps sloping down to a small stage. I moved down a dark row and slid into a seat, closed my eyes and attempted to catch my breath, and heard only the agitated rushing of my own blood.

Is someone dead? Professor Pindar had said— But I tamped that down, and found my thoughts returning to the atrium, to the friendly young man who had waved. Matthew—that was his name.