My last tour at the museum ended at a quarter to five, and I got my coat and headed outside. The clocks had been turned back a week earlier, and I still hadn’t gotten used to the dark coming in so early. I always feel a little pang of hurt that first day when darkness falls without warning. It’s the slight, sickening feeling of being reminded of the reckless authority of time, of losing your bearings in a world whose dimensions you thought you’d learned to live with. I took my time getting back. I imagined Paul practicing somewhere in an empty auditorium. The park was emptier than usual, but the runners were still out, sprinting under the bare trees around the reservoir, the light from the lamps shining off the reflector guards on their sneakers and clothing.

The distribution center for our neighborhood was an elementary school on a quiet street of town houses. There were paper cutouts of turkeys and pilgrims in the window. When I got there, people were bustling in and out, gathering in little clots on the steps to share whatever they knew. Judging from what I overheard on the way in, it wasn’t much. At work I’d heard various speculations—the man from Texas thought that there had been some sort of meltdown at a nuclear plant, and Ellen insisted that a crop duster from Colombia had disappeared—but none were particularly credible. It seemed strange that no one was explaining the sudden need for gas masks, and also that the city had been prepared with enough masks on hand for everyone. But I assumed there were reasons. Victor says that I don’t question things enough. He said I accept the way things are without challenge. The first words he ever directed at me were written on the top of an essay I’d handed in. “Your argument is unclear,” he wrote. “See me.”

The distribution was set up in one of the classrooms. There was a master list with all of the residents’ names, and when I got to the front of the line for J through P, I had to explain that I was also picking one up for Victor Assoulen, and could I please have his without having to stand in the line for A through F. There was a small bureaucratic scuffle among the volunteers working on the other side of the blockade of children’s desks, but after I showed them an ID with an address that matched Victor’s, it got straightened out, and a woman in a velour tracksuit handed me two boxes. On my way out I stopped to smile at a little girl hopping around in ballet slippers, and when I looked up again I noticed a note left on the blackboard. It read, in elegant teacher’s cursive, “Due Monday: Your predictions for the future.” I started to laugh, but caught myself when I turned back and met the cool gaze of the small prophet in scuffed ballet slippers.

Ask Victor, and he’ll tell you that the Middle Ages were more passionate times than these. Extreme contrasts and violent conflicts existed side by side, lending a thrilling vigor to life that order can’t provide. He’ll sit with you over a bottle of wine and explain to you in a breathlessly articulate manner how now all anyone wants is conflict resolution. They want to shake hands and settle matters; they want tolerance for all points of view, so long as those points of view are expressed through the proper channels and procedures. It’s not that Victor would have us all back in the thirteenth century, cheering in spasmodic effusion at public executions. His sense of morality is finely tuned. But he refuses to accept a system designed to reject conflict and force us all, like a fat lady through a keyhole, in the direction of a stable average. That’s the phrase he uses, a fat lady through a keyhole.