Selma had a brussels sprout casserole in the oven; she always made it for first-time guests because a casserole never goes wrong. Through the fogged-up window we saw that it was raining even harder. The rain fell as if all the waterfalls in the world had decided that today, for a change, they would all converge and fall on our village.

On the kitchen table, next to a package of Mon Chéris, lay one of the optician’s books about Buddhism. He quickly slipped it into one of Selma’s cutlery drawers. “May I?” Frederik asked, pointing at the package of Mon Chéris.

“Of course,” Selma replied.

“Delicious,” he said, nodding gravely, and Selma nodded back just as gravely, as if Mon Chéris were a highly specialized science known only to a few experts in all the world.

“You two are dripping,” Selma finally said.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Frederik said, and picked up the bathrobe and a towel in one hand and a second Mon Chéri in the other.

The optician started to clear the table and Selma to stir the sauce on the stove. As soon as the bathroom door closed, they spun around and hurried to me.

“Is everything okay? Any tingling in your arms?” Selma asked.

“How often is your mind going blank?” the optician asked.

They peered at me as if I were a patient in the emergency room.

I stroked Selma’s hair, which we had finally recognized as Rudi Carrell’s. “Everything’s fine,” I said, “hardly any blanks; condition stable.”

“Then all’s well,” Selma said, and Frederik returned wearing her bathrobe and with his sopping-wet cowl over his arm. I went into the bathroom with one of Selma’s dresses.

While the casserole was baking, Frederik sat on the radiator in the living room, in the exact spot from which the blank and I had talked to him on the phone for the first time.

The living room was even neater than usual at Selma’s. There wasn’t a speck of dust on the perfectly straight bookshelves. The stack of magazines on the coffee table was exactly aligned. The cushions on the red sofa looked like no one had ever leaned on them.

Frederik watched Selma hang our wet things on the drying rack. “May I help?” he asked, but Selma waved him away.

“Not at all,” she replied. “You can start by drying out, you sopping-wet monk.”

Selma hung our clothing up to dry as carefully as if it were going to hang there forever, as if future generations could learn valuable lessons about hanging laundry from it.

“You’re a good Buddhist,” Frederik observed.

Selma clamped a final clothespin on my pants and turned to face him.

“Nice that someone finally noticed,” she said.

After each of us had eaten two helpings of casserole and Frederik four, the optician laid his silverware on his plate and cleared his throat.