“I’m afraid I can’t stay,” I said. I heard my own voice, but disembodied, as if the sound no longer corresponded to me.

“Yes, yes,” said Reinecke with some weariness, as if he’d already heard this a hundred times. “You must go. But perhaps you might answer the phone, even so.”

I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, but before I could I was made conscious of the faint sound of ringing, and Reinecke had produced from behind his person a telephone remarkably like the one in my office. It sat atop the white marble tomb, incongruous.

“It’s for you,” he said, and the sound of the telephone ringing grew louder and louder, until it drowned out everything else.

28

“Hello?” I said. I was in my office and a considerable amount of time had passed. Through the telephone I could just barely hear the sound of light feminine breathing.

“Hello?” I said again. “Who’s this?”

The breathing increased in tempo for a moment, and then the caller finally spoke.

“This is a friend,” she said. It was a woman, as I’d thought, but she did not sound like either Linda in Professor Pindar’s office or the guest lecturer.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.

I looked out the window at the parking lot. Most of the cars had gone now, and the sky was awash in the soft dove-gray and golden light of dusk.

The prospect was unappealing, but I had no energy to resist. “What is it?”

“Can you meet me?”

I thought about that for a moment. I was so tired, and my meeting with the guest lecturer in the Arboretum had been so sunny and taxing.

“Oh, never mind,” said the woman. “I saw you in the auditorium today.”

“I’m sorry?”

“In the lecture hall—listen—I shouldn’t be saying this, trust me, they will not appreciate it, but you shouldn’t go back there—I can explain.”

I tried to make sense of what she’d said.

“Go back where?” I asked. “Explain what?”

“It’s for your own good—under no circumstances should you go to the hotel tonight. Really, you should never go there again.”

The hotel, I thought. And: I have heard this voice before.

“What makes you think I’m going to the hotel? Why shouldn’t I? Have we met before?”

There was a long pause, and then a silvery jingling noise, as if the caller was wearing a lot of bracelets.

“They’re using you,” she said, whispering now. “And yes, we have met. Once.”

“At the—”

“Open house. Yes. It’s Sharon,” she said, in a whisper so soft I could barely hear it.

Of course, I thought, I could see her clearly now, coming down the path, the FOR SALE sign like a grounded white bird on the lawn.