Holding the grease-spotted bags and balancing a stiff cardboard drink holder with several types of soda in it, Jonas rang the bell at 236 with his elbow, then rang it again, but no one came to the door and he couldn’t hear anyone moving around inside. The street behind him was narrowed by two lines of parked cars but nothing anywhere seemed to be moving. When he walked around to the side of the house to see if there was a window he might discreetly look through, he noticed a flight of exterior stairs that led to an entrance on the second floor. That had to be it, he thought; he climbed the stairs and, rather than knock with his foot, called through the door that he had brought the Arby’s. A second later the door opened inward and Jonas stepped inside.

No one was there in front of him, but he was aware of being peeked at through the wedge of space between the open door and its hinges. He took another step or two forward. Though he could see opposite him a tiny hallway that must have led to a bedroom and a bathroom, Novak’s home was mostly one square living room, which would have been dark, since it faced alleys on two sides, were it not for the fact that there were at least twice as many lamps as were necessary for a room that size. All of them were turned on. The effect was compounded by the fact that the walls were freshly painted in a kind of skull-frying white. Pieces of paper were taped over the windows. The odor inside the room was such that Jonas had to make an effort not to flinch.

Novak closed the door behind him and grabbed the food out of his hands. There was a small, grimy-looking kitchenette off to their right and Novak emptied out the bag on the counter in there, unwrapping each item and checking carefully, in the case of the sandwiches, underneath the bun. He lifted the cover off each soda, stuck his finger in it, and then poured it down the sink. Jonas cleared his throat.

“Joseph?” he said. “I’m Jonas.”

“That’s going to be confusing,” Novak said, and started eating a roast beef sandwich with some kind of cheese on it. Jonas felt his own surprise reflected in Novak’s stare and realized that each was taken aback to see how young the other one was. Novak, though he was well on his way to baldness, still looked no older than about twenty-five.

“Why did you bring all this food?” Novak said. “This is way too much. Nobody else is coming, right?”

“Just me. I just wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got a sampling.”

“A what?” Novak said. He scowled. “You’re here to steal from me.”

“No. Absolutely not. Like I said on the phone, I’m kind of a fan of yours. I went to a fair in Chicago and some of your drawings were hanging on the wall there. I thought they were really beautiful. Did you know that people as far away as Chicago think you’re a great artist?” He could hear himself talking as if Novak were a child, but how else was he supposed to handle it? How did you know what aspect of him you were speaking to?

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Novak said.

“I will pay you a lot of money for your art, if you’re willing to sell it. But I’m not going to steal anything from you. I promise. Why, do you think other people have been stealing from you?”

“Do you think other people have been stealing from you?” Novak repeated, licking his fingers.

“Like your brother, maybe?”

“Like your brother, maybe?”

He said these things that seemed sarcastic or childish or angry but the tone of his voice didn’t really change significantly, nor did the look on his face. The sandwich got the lion’s share of his attention. He wore glasses with clear plastic frames, and what hair he had was so fair as to be almost invisible, like a baby’s hair; his pale skin was still touched by acne. Most remarkably, though Jonas was uncomfortable even noticing it, was that these features sat on a head that was so small he thought he could have palmed it like a cantaloupe. Novak put a handful of french fries in his mouth and then went over to the door and locked it.

“I don’t like other people seeing my drawings,” he said.

That’s what makes them so worth seeing, Jonas thought, but instead he said, “I can understand that. It’s private. What do you usually do with a drawing after you finish it?”

“I don’t know.”

“How often does your brother come to visit?”

“I don’t know.”

Jonas stopped trying to make eye contact with him; he felt the need to make his own presence less provocative somehow. As his eyes grew used to the overpowering lighting, he thought he picked something up from the walls themselves, something other than just the shocking white. He took a few steps forward and saw, or thought he saw, the ghost of a face.

“Do you draw on the walls sometimes?” he asked. Novak reacted as if he’d been poked, jumping up and walking toward the papered-over window, lacing his fingers on top of his head. “Only sometimes,” he said. “Not that much. She just painted again. She was really mad. I only do it if I’m out of paper and can’t go out, when I’m not feeling good.”

“When you’re not feeling good?” Jonas said. No reply. “Does drawing make you feel better?” No reply. He felt like he was burying himself deeper but he had to keep going until he hit on the right question to ask. “What makes you feel like doing it?” he said.

“I don’t know,” Novak said, pacing now.

The wall drawings were an interesting idea but Jonas’s first thought was that of course there would be no way to get them out of the apartment itself. Unless he came back with a camera. But right now it was hard to imagine Novak ever letting him back in here again. “Joseph,” he said, “you know, if you like, I would be happy to give you some more paper so you don’t run out. I could buy a lot of it for you. Is that something you’d like?”

“I don’t know,” Novak said.

“You don’t know? But then you could draw all you wanted, and you wouldn’t have to worry about her”-he didn’t know who he was referring to: Novak’s landlord, he assumed, unless it was his mother-“getting mad about the walls.”

“She said she’d throw me out,” Novak said.

“Right, so this way you could keep drawing and not have to worry about that. What do you like to draw with most?”

“Sharpies,” Novak said miserably. He stopped pacing in front of the papered-over window, with his back to Jonas.

“Sharpies cost money too, right? I could get you all of those you wanted. You could draw whenever you felt like it without getting into trouble. Wouldn’t you like that?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

It could have been the “I don’t know” of a three-year-old, just a conversation stopper; anyway, Jonas chose not to hear it. “Really?” he said. “Then why do you do it?”

“I don’t know,” Novak said, and turned around, and started walking forward; and Jonas, when he saw the expression on his face, took a step back toward where he thought the door was. “I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.” Their eyes met, and for one incredible moment he knew they were wishing the exact same thing at the same time, which was that Jonas had never come here; and then Jonas started a little too casually toward Novak’s front door, but before he could figure which of the two locks to unlock, something hard, harder than a fist anyway, connected with the back of his head. He had never really been hit before, not ever, his whole life long. Everything went white, as if his eyes had rolled all the way around, and it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds later that he opened his eyes and was looking up at Novak sitting on a stool in the kitchenette, eating another one of the cold Arby’s sandwiches, and looking very worried.

Time, of course, would not stand still in the way Cynthia wished it to, and so eventually the door to the veranda opened and Irene came back squinting into the darkened room. The change in light was such that Irene didn’t seem to see her right away. Cynthia didn’t say anything for fear of waking her father, though she was unsure why, when she had rushed down here precisely because his death was imminent, she should now be placing such value on his sleep. Then Irene began gesturing with her thumb, like a hitchhiker, and Cynthia understood that she was suggesting the two of them go out into the hallway.