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.”