FORTY-ONE

An hour after they retrieved the body, I found myself going up and down the stairs. Dan was in his room. Asleep, or at least I hoped that he was asleep. The house had only three floors, and only two flights of stairs. But it seemed to me that it had turned into a bizarre labyrinth, like in Escher’s drawings. You could go up and down and then up and down again, until you couldn’t understand whether you were going up or down.