Justin woke up confused. He was not in his own home, he was in Willa’s apartment. The place where they grew up was a ten-minute drive from here. Too close. He lay on his side, facing the gray-and-yellow comforter hanging over the bed. A small nest of Willa’s brown hair, a tumbleweed the size of a golf ball, fled into the darkness under the bed when he exhaled. He hadn’t allowed himself to get into her bed last night. Willa had fallen asleep on the futon. He went into her room, put his bag on the floor, and slept with it tucked into his belly.

Earlier, when it was dark, he heard her come in and get changed, heard her moving around in the apartment, smelled coffee. Before leaving, she’d stopped to stare at him and he’d opened his eyes, but they hadn’t spoken to each other. It was quiet now.

Around noon, he went into the kitchen to search for something to eat. Last night the place had appeared cluttered, messy. Now, with the sun coming through the windows, it looked like a nice place, nicer than any apartment he’d ever lived in, with enough room for a small dining table next to the kitchen. A vase of flowers stood in the center of the table. He hadn’t noticed it last night. Maybe that guy had brought them to her, if men still did that. Willa hadn’t completely unpacked. Crates of junk sat here and there, pushed against the wall and out of the way.

The cold refrigerator air roused him a bit. A glass pitcher of water magnified a bowl of grapes behind it, but when he grabbed the pitcher it slipped out of his hands and shattered on the floor by his bare feet. Icy water bathed his toes. He stepped away from it and onto the dry carpet in the living room.

He sat on the futon and watched stupid daytime crap on TV. A show with a panel of women talking about the news and celebrities. He knew nothing about either. On another show, a chef showed a petite woman in a coral-colored blazer how to make a grilled cheese, as if that needed to be taught. He didn’t have a television at home. A person could sit and watch TV for hours and not think about it. A person could decide to only do that, and TV wasn’t good for him. He should be challenging himself at all times, challenging his mind and memory. Making things, reading things. This was a time to start over now, with nothing. Willa didn’t believe him about his building collapsing. All he needed was a computer to show her the proof, but he didn’t see one around.

Earlier, he’d noticed the closed door next to the kitchen and assumed it was a closet. When he opened it, he saw familiar miniatures among the clutter, objects Willa had been collecting since she was a kid. Little bristle Christmas trees that she had bought at a craft shop. They’d once sat on the dresser in her childhood bedroom. No computer here, either. She must have hidden it from him on purpose, thinking he’d steal from her. He didn’t need her fucking computer and didn’t want anything from her he could stuff into his bag and take with him. Not any object, no money. And nowhere to put anything anyway.

This kind of disorder appealed to him. Obviously, an artist worked here. Piles of paper with sketches on them, books, and reminders towered on her desk. Their mother wouldn’t have been able to rest in a house with a room like this.

He turned away from the scraps, pieces of wood, color swatches, paint jars and tubes, and found himself staring at scenes. So many of them, they appeared as a senseless jumble of figures and colors. Willa had stacked the wooden boxes on top of each other, as if she didn’t care about them after she’d finished with them. Justin liked seeing them together, piled against the wall. The hours, days, months that she’d put into making them, and she’d tossed them aside. Many were unfinished. It didn’t surprise him that Willa would quit on a project if it didn’t work immediately.

On the desk he found a disorder of brushes with tiny bristles and jars of paint. A light on an adjustable arm, and a magnifying glass also attached to an adjustable arm hovered over one of Willa’s projects. Inside the box on the desk a boy and girl floated in a pool.