Midafternoon. Alexandra and Han were asleep. A man’s voice came onto the radio, a stranger in the flat. Dial down the volume, you still the air. But his heartbeat.
Jeremy held a cup he wouldn’t drink from. He did not have a brain for tea these days. He was all lit up. A piece of brown bread in the mouth tethered him.
He took two quick laps around the building, a straight shot three, a left, a right, and another two laps around a building. In the street, men with umbrellas hooked at the crooks of their elbows complained that they didn’t know how to dress for this decade of weather. A girl stood by the subway station passing out flyers stamped with the words want to learn english? in English. She competed with a megaphoned man flanked by dancers selling the second coming of Christ. Men in fluorescent mesh vests stood by scaffolding, beckoning and backing a vehicle, and there was metal rolling everywhere, drilling. Jeremy tensed himself against the noise. He settled on the steps of someone else’s building. He had memorized the London number.
“Mr. Lawrence is not available,” his secretary said. “Might I take down a message for you?”
“No,” he said.
At home, Alexandra and Han woke shortly before dinner. Jeremy lifted steamed asparagus onto a plate. Alexandra wanted to tell him about the most beautiful dream she’d had. They went to a rocky cliff to visit her brother, and he was an old man.
“When do I stop thinking of all the hypotheticals I was too slow to precipitate?” Alexandra said.