Vicky stirs on the couch. I rise up out of it, wait. The traffic light changes downstairs. The roads are, by now, mostly quiet. I am on the edge of something. Don’t wake up, I think at her, don’t you wake up, Vicky. Sleep, stay sleeping. I won’t hurt you. Don’t come. In the loft with the babysitter so many years before, I had heard her fall asleep and had felt her leave the room with her wakeful mind, and she had been alive and asleep at the same time, and it meant something to me, then, to be in the same space with someone alive and asleep, all at once comforted and abandoned. She releases a sigh, resettles herself. The couch cushions loosen. Wheels roll through the city.