The next day – although I am not altogether sure why it is the next day, beyond the fact that whatever is important must have happened before it, and therefore its innovations are limited to commentary … and then, in life too, things always feel that way, as if whatever has to be said has already been said, and now a response is expected, although you don’t know what it is. Perhaps it’s enough to smile, since smiling takes the place of speech, acknowledges everything and therefore reveals nothing. Even if, sometimes, you know it is inventing reasons to exist, nothing has ever been proven, and this is not something we have the right to talk about; it would be like taking issue with a dream.

The next day he asks if I feel better, and it’s then I know it is the next day; drifting in a circle, the days about his desk have always been familiar; and he, at the heart of his days, is little more than a desk himself, durable, wiped clean each night, dependable yet anonymous as that second cigarette. For myself, when I turn about I see a rainy sky, always different, always longer than whatever day contains it, so that it overlaps both the future and the past, and you can walk all day and night; you can walk far beyond it without once reaching the end of it, although it somehow makes you feel alive to try.

Now, where my face used to be, a smile forms in the air - also durable, also dependable, also anonymous. I would be tucked up snug and sound behind it, if I knew who I was to be tucked up anywhere. I smile at the smile; I experience the ritualistic joy of everything that has occurred before, and that, by necessity, must fall out in a certain way.

"You feel better, that's good," he says - and then, as an afterthought - "I saw you in Ryman's yesterday, didn't I?"

"I don't think so."

"That's right, you were standing by the counter, where the magazines are."

"Bob, I don't even know where Ryman's is."

"We had a conversation," he said with finality, so that everything became the past; everything became fixed and its purposes frozen, no longer open to negotiation. Not knowing how to respond, I dropped my eyes.

"Let's walk," he said, and, as we did so, he continued quietly: "Let me share something with you. Sometimes I'm curious, and although my curiosity needn't directly concern you, it gives me plenty to think about, which is why there is something I should like you too to ponder upon ... " He stopped abruptly and touched the top of my head for emphasis: "How many doors are in this room?”