She returns to Jørgen’s embraces and slams her door behind her, as we stand ashamed and shuffling from foot to foot. It doesn’t take long for the others to retreat to their private dens of guilt, beginning with Liam, but after a while, even I, too, make my departure. I had no idea her anguish was worse than mine.

The next morning, Maddy wakes me with relentless knocking. “Get up!” she shouts. “I know you’re in there!” I groggily go see what she wants.

“I’ve been enlisted to come talk to you,” she says.

“About what?” I ask.

“They don’t feel comfortable with you being here any longer,” she says. “They say they’ll give you a day to pack your things before you have to be out.”

“Who says that?” I ask. “Reggie and Carl and Seung Hun and Liam and the Professor? Because I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, it’s true,” she says. “But it’s also the staff.”

“Why me?” I ask. I sit down on my threshold. “I’ve been here for months just keeping to myself and working on my novel.”

“The others said they wanted to leave, too, but after some discussion it was revealed that you instigated the conflict yesterday with Jørgen. You encouraged them to become aggressive. They decided to tell management. If that’s how it happened, I don’t feel comfortable with you hanging around, either.

“For what it’s worth,” she adds, “I promise I’ll stay by your side until we figure out a plan.”

We’re walking through one of the citrus groves behind the hostel when Maddy stops to pluck an orange and asks, “How do you feel about Athens? Or one of the Greek islands? You could take a ferry from Antalya.”

“Too expensive,” I say. “Besides, I’m not sure how often they’ll be running at the beginning of March.”

She grinds her thumbnail into the rind. The smell of the fruit opens as if from beneath the lid of a jewelry box. There are oranges rotting all over the ground. I question such abundance, if the loss of plenty here shows up as a real lack elsewhere.

“I wish I had been able to see your little boy, Maddy,” I say.

“There was nothing you could have done,” she says.

“Does the father know?” I ask.

“I’m ignorant of the father’s identity,” she says. “I thought it would be for the best. That way, on seeing someone who wasn’t me show up in my son, I could imagine him as any man that I wanted.

“I’m sorry I followed you,” she continues. “I saw your posts, and I thought, That looks like somewhere I can go. It was far away and so different from my life, but also safe because it had you.”

“I posted about my trip to try to make my wife jealous, but that was pure idiocy. I’m sure I wasn’t a good husband. Why would she be jealous?”

“Do you ever consider,” Maddy asks, “that what happened between you and me and between you and Sofie was actually pretty harmful?”