“All I’m gonna say, and I’m not gonna say any more right now because this is all looking very unprofessional, is this. If we split up I know for sure I can survive.”

“Fuck you!”

She hung up again and marched out of the house. Fuck the portfolio. Fuck the receipts. Fuck everything right now.

But somewhere along that short passage from the front door to the stoop, as Sylvia left the safety of her home for a place where she’d lost control, an invisible hand pressed the anger from her and wet her down with fear. For as she stepped out into the bright, hot morning, she was quaking with the primal fear of darkness—a fear grounded in the infinity of fearful possibilities, the fear of not even knowing what she shouldn’t be afraid of.

Why does he think he can talk to me like that? she asked herself. What have I done? What am I doing? Why did I go back to him? What was there to prove? What was there to gain?

The questions echoed in her belly like stones dropped down a well. Feeling weighed down, she sat on the stoop in her wrinkled clothes that didn’t match, and thought about the mess that was her life. At times like these, she thought, it would be nice to have a father or a brother or a son—a man to reassure her that it was them and not her that was fucked up.

How was it that Lewis couldn’t understand her hurt? she wondered. Or was it that he did, but simply didn’t care? He said he could survive if they broke up. What was he implying? That she couldn’t? By what ludicrous standard was he measuring her? She came into this world alone and she would leave alone. At first this declaration filled her with defiance. Soon after, though, as she considered that she was alone now, and had been for most of her life, she began to feel vulnerable. If she lost her job there was no family to move back to, or any sibling to put her up, or any uncle to arrange a job. Unlike him. Unlike most people. Was that what he’d meant? If so, he was right in a way. Which made her depressed now, made her turn her face from the sun and hide it between her knees.

She began to hum, the monotony of the sound echoing the white noise that filled her head.

A dog barked. She looked up out of reflex, then dropped her head again.

Footsteps went by. Three people, by the sound of it. A man and a woman, talking to each other. The third person, the one in slippers, did not speak. Those steps trailed the others.

A truck rumbled by and stopped a few doors down. She recognized the driver’s voice. UPS. Overhead a plane descended toward La Guardia. Down the street someone was watering their garden. Mr. Jonas, most likely; he was always getting shrubs delivered from Calyx.