The black man’s head inclined just the slightest bit, and Jack nodded in response. They walked out of the barn into the blinding sunlight, the foot of space between them as inviolable as a stone wall.

Mountain Felcher’s sentence for burglary ended three months later. That night, in the common room, there was a buzz of interest. Now that Mountain was gone, the program lineup was up for grabs. “There’s hockey on, you moron,” an inmate cried out.

“Yeah, and your mother’s the goalie.”

The footsteps of the guard on duty echoed as he hurried down the hall toward the raised voices. Jack closed the book he was reading and walked to the table where the two men threw insults like javelins. He reached down and plucked the remote from one’s hand, settled himself in the seat just beneath the TV, and turned on Jeopardy!

This Hindi word for prince is derived from Rex, latin for King.

From the back of the room, an inmate called out: “What is Raja?”

The two countries with the highest percentage of Shiite Muslims.

“What are Iran and Saudi Arabia!” Aldo said, taking the chair beside Jack.

The man who had wanted to watch hockey sank down behind them. “What are Iran and Iraq,” he corrected. “What are you, stupid?”

The guard returned to his booth. And Jack, who held the remote control on his thigh like a scepter, knew every answer by heart.

Late March 2000

Salem Falls,

New Hampshire

Every day for the past three weeks, Jack had awakened in Roy Peabody’s guest room and looked out the window to see Stuart Hollings-a diner regular-walking his Holstein around the town green for a morning constitutional. The old man came without fail at 5:30 A.M., a collar fitted around the placid animal, who plodded along like a faithful puppy.

This morning, when Jack’s alarm clock went off, he looked out to see a lone car down Main Street, and puddles of mud that lay like lakes. Scanning the green, he realized Stuart and his animal were nowhere to be seen.

Shrugging, he grabbed a fresh T-shirt and boxers-the result of a Wal-Mart shopping spree he’d gone on with his first paycheck-and stepped into the hall.

Coming out of the bathroom, Roy startled when he saw Jack. “Aw, Christ,” he said, doing a double take. “I dreamed you died.”

“That must have been awful.”

Roy walked off. “Not as awful as it felt just now when I realized it wasn’t true.”

Jack grinned as he went into the bathroom. When he’d moved in it was immediately clear that it had been some time since Roy had had a roommate . . . unlike Jack, who had eight months of practice living among other men. Consequently, Roy did what he could to keep Jack from thinking this was truly his home. He made Jack buy his own groceries-even ketchup and salt-and mark them with his initials before putting them into the refrigerator or the cupboard. He hid the television remote control, so that Jack couldn’t just sit on the couch and flip through the channels. All this might have begun to wear on Jack, if not for the fact that every morning when he came into the kitchen to find Roy eating his cereal, the old man had also carefully set a place for Jack.

Before joining Roy for breakfast, Jack glanced out the window.

“What are you looking for?”

“Nothing.” Jack pulled out his chair and emptied some muesli into his bowl, then set up the box like a barrier. A cereal fort, that was what he’d called it as a kid. Over the cardboard wall he saw Roy take a second helping of Count Chocula. “That stuff’ll kill you.”

“Oh, good. I figured it was going to be cirrhosis.”

Jack shoveled a spoonful of cereal into his mouth. He wondered if Stuart had gone on vacation. “So,” he said. “How did I die?”

“In my dream, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

The old man leaned closer. “Scabies.”

“Scabies?”

“Uh-huh. They’re bugs-mites-that get right under your skin. Burrow up inside your bloodstream and lay their eggs.”

“Thanks,” Jack said dryly. “I know what they are. But I don’t think they kill you.”

“Oh, sure, wise guy. When’s the last time you saw someone who had them?”

Jack shook his head, amused. “I have to admit . . . never.”

“I did-in the navy. A sailor. Looked like someone had drawn all over him with pencil, lines running up between his fingers and toes and armpits and privates, like he was being mapped from the inside out. Itched himself raw, and the scratches got infected, and one morning we buried him at sea.”

Jack wanted to explain how following that logic, the man had died of a blood infection rather than scabies. Instead, he looked Roy right in the eye. “You know how you get scabies,” he said casually. “From sharing clothing and bed sheets with an infected person. Which means if I had really died of scabies, like in your dream, you wouldn’t be that far behind me.”

Roy was silent for a moment. Then he stood and cleared his place. “You know, I’ve been thinking. There isn’t much point in both of us buying milk when we can’t each get through a half-gallon in a week. Might as well do it so you buy the milk one week and the next week it’s my turn.”

“Seems economically sound.”

“Exactly.” Roy rinsed his bowl. “You still wash your own sheets, though.”

Jack stifled a grin. “Well, of course. You never know what you’re going to catch from someone else’s laundry.”

Roy eyed him, trying to decide whether Jack was being sincere. Then he shuffled toward the living room. “I knew I liked you for a reason,” he said.

Roy, who categorically refused to work in the kitchen, manned the cash register under the watchful eye of his daughter. Addie let him out of sight only briefly, and even then with warnings: “It should only take you ten minutes to run to the bank, Dad, and I’m going to be counting.” Mostly he sat and did crossword puzzles, trying to pretend he wasn’t looking when Darla, the relief waitress, bent down to tie her shoe and her skirt rode up.

It was nearly 11 A.M.; a time that was slow for the waitresses but frenetic for the kitchen staff. Roy could hear the oil in the deep fryer heating up infinitesimally, degree by degree. He would sometimes remember how he was once so good he could cut inch-long segments from a carrot with a cleaver, blindfolded, and end the last slice a half inch from the hand that held it in place.

A coin rang onto the Formica beside the cash register. “Penny for your thoughts,” Addie said, stuffing the rest of her tip into her pockets.

“They’re worth a quarter.”

“Hustler.” Addie rubbed the small of her back. “I know what you were thinking, anyway.”

“Oh, you do?” It amazed him, sometimes, how Addie could do the most ordinary thing-blink her eyes or fold her legs beneath a chair-and suddenly Roy would swear that his wife had come back. He looked at his daughter’s tired eyes, at her chapped hands, and wondered how Margaret’s losing her life had led Addie to throw away her own.

“You’re thinking of how easy it is for you to slide back into this routine.”

Roy laughed. “What routine? Sitting on my butt all day?”

“Sitting in the diner on your butt all day.”

It was impossible to tell Addie what he really thought: that this diner meant nothing to him, not since Margaret’s death. But Addie had gotten it into her head that keeping the Do-Or-Diner open would give him a purpose he wouldn’t find at the bottom of a bottle of vodka. What Addie didn’t understand was that what you had could never make up for what you’d lost.

He and Margaret had closed the diner for a week each summer to take Addie on a family vacation. They had driven by car, to towns with names that drew them: Cape Porpoise, Maine; Egypt, Massachusetts; Paw Paw, Michigan; Defiance, Ohio. Roy would point out a flock of Canada geese, a looming purple mountain, a sunlit field of wheat-and then he’d glance in the back to find his daughter asleep on the backseat, the whole world passing her by. “There’s an elephant in the lane next to us!” he’d call out. “The moon is falling out of the sky!” Anything to make Addie take stock of her surroundings.