The night brings its own kind of memory and revenge. The lucky ones sleep through the chaos. But tonight, Grace is not among the fortunate. No sleep for Grace, who is thinking of the color of death. Is it white? Is it black? Is it warm or is it cold? Is it a coffin in a cemetery, or is it a door? She puts the questions to Sam—though Sam does not answer. She stores so many of his words in her head that she feels as if she has become nothing more than a book he has written. “You have to die at the right time. That’s the secret.” He’d died at thirty-eight. Just after dawn. How did you know it was the right time? Many died too late. Why overstay your welcome?
She tries to think of something more soothing. She gets up from the bed and walks into the backyard. She takes a breath. She thinks of Mister. She tells herself she will try to love him. But she does love him. Not that love made anything easy. This is how Grace will spend her night. Thinking and asking and thinking.
Andrés, too, is wide awake. He lights a cigarette. He is thinking of another kind of death. Being held prisoner by his claustrophobic past, that is the worst kind of death—the kind of death that doesn’t let you touch or breathe, that makes your heart feel as if it’s a stone. “I died before I died.” He’d read that somewhere. He knows exactly what it means. He thinks of a bicycle. He thinks of a ring. He thinks of a little girl who’d called him Andy. He thinks of a man who was a woman. He thinks of a mother holding his face between her palms, the only paradise he’s ever known. Tonight, sleep will not be among his visitors.
Mister is doing what he always does when he can’t sleep. He picks up a book and thumbs through it. He finds a passage, then reads it. Then rereads it. Then rereads it aloud, Vine a este mundo con ojos/y me voy sin ellos. I don’t know what this means. Tonight, he can’t translate. He puts the book down, then looks up at the ceiling as if it were the sky. He thinks of Abraham sacrificing Isaac at an altar in the middle of the desert. He was a boy when Sam read the story to him. “You wouldn’t kill me, Sam, would you?” Sam had held him in his arms. “Eres mi vida,” he whispered. “Even if God told you to kill me, Sam?” “Even if God told me. Even then. Someday, Mister, you’ll understand the story.” At twenty-eight, he did not understand the story. Just as he did not understand why the story had entered his head. On nights like these, there is no logic to the visitors who make their way into his house. They come, they enter, they have their say. He reaches for Liz, then realizes she is gone tonight. He picks up the phone. He needs to hear her voice.
William Hart has found an apartment near a park. He is lying in bed, drinking a scotch, thinking of that boy, that beautiful boy he’d met so many years ago in Juárez. Maybe that’s why he’d gone back there—to look for him. But of course that beautiful boy was a man now. That was the problem with boys. They grew up to be men. He had no interest in men.
Repent from the evil! his pastor yelled—then laid his soft, uncallused hands on him. He pretended to be slain in the Spirit of the Lord Jesus. He fell backward, his arms raised, Praise the everlasting God! But it was all still there, his incurable, impossible addiction. That’s what his uncle had told him, when he was a boy. This is impossible and beautiful. If it would only go away.
Dave tosses and turns. He hadn’t dreamed that accident in years. Now the dream has returned. Tonight, he does not want to sleep. And so he does what he always does when he doesn’t want to sleep. He calls a woman. This one is named Cassandra. Hello and what are you doing, did I wake you up and would you like some company. Mostly they said yes, the women he knew. Tonight, it is No, no, hell no, and tomorrow we need to talk. Cassandra cares nothing for his aversion to sleep.