But as she headed in that direction, she thought about Desmond again, about his simple room, his simple, absentee relationship. Maybe he was unhappy from time to time, unsatisfied, lonely, but surely he wasn’t misplacing his car and walking zigzags at ten in the morning. That was what she wanted, that simplicity. There was only one thing to do, one way to turn the day around, make up for not having told Berman about Dale: prove Berman’s suspicions wrong. Call Dale and call the whole thing off. By the time she went back for her next session, the whole business would be in the past and it wouldn’t matter that she hadn’t brought it up. Her life would have the simple clarity of Desmond’s and she’d use all of this energy to move their joint project forward. Progress. Going to Berman had done her some good, after all. It wasn’t time and money down the drain.

She’d call from the goddamned cell phone as soon as she got to the car. It was Wednesday. Dale seemed to have free time on Wednesday afternoons. They’d meet and talk about what had happened and she’d explain why their little flirtation was over. Then she’d go visit Desmond and make specific plans for the next couple of weeks.

Fifteen

Insert Coin, Pull Lever

1.

“You know, of course, that this entire area of the city was once part of the harbor, a swampy tidal basin they started dredging in the late nineteenth century. Imported a lot of Dutch engineers who were used to this kind of project—dikes and so on. Most people don’t realize it, but the ground here is still spongy. It’s sinking. Residents are trying to save on water bills by drilling wells on their tiny plots, undermining their own foundations. Shortsighted, to say the least. They’ll see how much they’ve saved when the supporting structures of their buildings start to collapse.”