AFTER HER BROTHER’S BODY WASHED ASHORE, ROMAN

After her brother’s body washed ashore, Roman spent time dogsitting in a house on the west side of the Town. There was the pressing matter of her own body and what to do with it, so she fed it intermittently, walked it like she walked the dog, and washed its hands. The house was dominated by a spiral staircase that she did not climb; in fact, she eventually forgot the second floor existed.

Outside, the Town held a street fair. Women rubbed raw chickens with paprika and locked them in barbecue cages; people in latex handed out smoothie samples. Down the street, elderly men floated out of the nursing home like pressed flowers from a novel, cotton balls scotch-taped to the insides of their arms. Inside the house, Roman made the plainest meals: recipes consisting mostly of flour and water that she found in a cookbook written by monks. She had this cookbook; she had her mind’s civilizing impulse, which is to say, her resistance to self-indulgent grief; she had the radiance of her memories, and the terrific rate at which they were fading. At night, the dog circled her warily, but they were both too afraid to lie down.

One day a friend sent a doctor, and the doctor ran her gold-tipped fingers over Roman’s body, pressing gently on her liver and lungs, lungs that (she was ashamed to admit) had newly begun to feel like they were filling with liquid. She despised her body for engineering this sympathetic reaction. It was like that time she had walked through the house and random objects (a blender, a space heater, a garlic press) appeared to emit light, as if she were underwater, and pushing through swaying weeds to find her brother. Roman found this delusion grandiose and narcissistic. But as the doctor peered into her ears, she allowed herself one memory.

Roman and her brother used to do something they called Famous Dancing, though of course they were not famous and it was not dancing: it was a kind of gymnastics routine performed to Swan Lake. Being older and stronger, Roman would lift and twirl her brother; they cartwheeled in unison, did back bends and splits. During the rare times they performed for their parents, to calm her nerves, Roman would retreat to the place that they were building together, every night before bed, in their shared mind. That uninhabited city they had designed, whispering back and forth between their bunk beds, with its defunct caramel factory and abandoned fairground and feral llama population: some llamas grave and funereal, some llamas with overbites.

Wait until you know that you only deserve whatever is free and right in front of you and not wanted by anyone else. I cried so much I stopped wearing makeup. What I remember most clearly—

Roman always fell asleep first, during these nights of construction. Much as she tried to stay awake, she always faltered in her purpose, though she never wanted to leave her brother building their city, its race tracks and strip clubs and burger shacks, out loud, alone in the dark.