At some point it had snowed. Last night, this morning. It had been hours since I’d been outside. The snow was still white, still falling, the roads with the ruts of tires. Soon the snowplows would be out, scraping down to the pavement. My clothing, left behind by the side of the tub, had gotten sopping wet, so I was wearing a sweat suit abandoned by some other guest at the Narcissus Hotel, found by Eileen, a stranger’s socks, too, my own shoes and winter coat. I had to walk past the house of the couple who’d been necking everywhere, a story that seemed already in the past. By past I mean I regretted it, I was telling the story in my head. The woman I hadn’t been left for drove a little red Honda. There it sat in her driveway, draped in snow. That was all right. It was a common car in those days, and I saw it and its doppelgangers everywhere. Even now a little red Honda seems to have a message for me, though they look nothing like they used to. When will this be over, I wondered as I walked in the snow. The humiliation is what I meant. Everything else is over, and all that’s left is the vehicle of my humiliation.

You would recognize my voice, too. People do, in the grocery store, the airport, over the phone when I call to complain about my gas bill. Your voice, they say, are you—?

I have one of those voices, I always say. I don’t mind if they recognize me but I’m not going to help them do it.

He kept telling me I had to be kind. Why? Why on earth? When life itself was not.

A Splinter

When Lenny was sixteen he ran away from home. Sailed. Bussed, as in bussing tables. Walked, from table to table to the ship’s kitchen and back, round and round the decks of the Queen Elizabeth 2, on its voyage from New York to Southampton. His family knew he’d gone—his father had helped him land the job—they just expected him to turn around with the boat itself, same job, opposite direction, home in two weeks. But instead of spending a single day wandering Southampton he hitchhiked to London and tried to get a job in show business. “How stupid,” his mother said, when she heard the news. She was English. He was not. Or he was, but in a way that only he understood.