I was able to use miles instead of buying a last-minute ticket, and the next day I went to see my doctor for a checkup and vaccination. I also wanted to ask about the pills Dr. Nando had suggested.

“Good drugs,” he said. “Clean, few side effects. But I can prescribe pills for you. If you ever need a prescription let me know.”

“Thank you.”

“How is life otherwise?”

“I’m worried about dying.”

“Why? You’re in perfect health.”

I’m not worried about death, I’m worried about dying. That I have not done enough. That there would be no more meaning even if I had. That the most savage among us, or else the most savage parts of all of us, prevail. I’m afraid there is no sense in life, and if there is I fucked up and missed it. That there are no second chances. “That’s good to hear” was all I said.

“Relax. You have a lot of road ahead of you,” he reassured me. “You’re just a little exhausted. Take a vacation, it will help you regain perspective.”

“I’m going to Brazil next week.”

“You will need a yellow fever vaccine. While you are at it, you should get diphtheria, and there’s a new vaccine you should have too. When was your last hemoglobin, by the way?”

“Eleven years.”

“They only last ten.”

“What’s the new vaccine for?”

“Diseases guys like us don’t get.”

“Who gets them?”

“Guys who don’t take the vaccine.”

He was a good doctor, but he was locked in a death dance with the insurance company for every nickel he could charge them. I played my part and took the shot.

The next day I went to get new contact lenses from swaybacked Dr. Nelson. When he hunched over the microscope, though, he was the image of Hephaestus, as he worked a miracle to make me see better.

I was glued together pretty well after that, but I still felt something was wrong. I could not point to anything specific. There was simply something wrong, and I did not know what. When Nell called that afternoon, telling me she had to see me right away, it seemed to confirm my diffuse worries.

“How did you find that one?” she asked incredulously, when I arrived at the restaurant where she had asked to meet. “A real Adela Quested.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind. That girl from the club, Anna.”

“I don’t want to get into it. She’s—”

“Crazier than the Mad Hatter on angel dust, is what she is,” Nell said, cutting me off.

“She’s just dull.”

“Did you do anything with her?”

“No. Why?”

“Listen,” she hunted around in an enormous green leather shoulder bag, until she retrieved a tiny, white, metallic square. “You know, she’s been calling everyone. I don’t even know how she got this number,” Nell said, waving her hand over the device, which woke up with the sound of Anna’s voice defaming me in the vilest terms.

“Oh. Why do you say that?” I heard Nell coaxing her along, in her best Linda Tripp voice.

“Because I can,” Anna said. “Who does he think he is?”

“He’s one of the most decent people I know,” Nell said at length, after Anna had gone on long enough to discredit herself completely. Good old Nell. “If things between you were not what you wanted, maybe it is because you were not honest with him or yourself, and now you’re angry. I don’t know, Anna. I wasn’t there. Then again, maybe it’s because of the way you were raised, or the things in your head.”

“My last—”

“I’m not done,” Nell said. “But I have what I need. Listen, I know you’re not from here. I know you don’t know what you’re doing. But I do, and if you don’t stop all of this immediately you are going to find yourself in very serious trouble. Do you hear me, Anna? It’s not the kind of attention you want,” Nell finished, perfectly composed and perfectly frightening. “I see through you like a broken window. I just thought you should know that.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I said, as the recording ended. “You taped your conversation with her?”

“I cover my backside,” she said unapologetically. “I thought you did, too. Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I thought it would go away,” I said.

“I should have seen through her whole innocent act at the club, sorry. You know what happened to Matt.”

“You weren’t the one thinking of taking her home. Yeah, I know.”

“What did she say to you?”

“Does it matter? It’s the risk of taking someone home.”

“You know, and I’m not saying this because she’s from the South, half of people still live in the nineteenth century.”

“You let it hinder you, or you take it in stride.”

“I’m glad you can make light of it.”

“Thanks to you,” I said.

“Fifty percent of people can’t see beyond their own experience.”

“I’d say ninety.”

We let it drop, as Nell read my unarticulated thoughts, at least the ones that were uppermost. The thoughts beneath that were hidden from her. How could they not be? They were still hidden from me.

“Just find someone good and solid. There are tons of great girls. Only be careful,” she motioned with her hand to imply the city, to incriminate the Western world, “of the bad ones.”

“Well, as my Aunt Isadora would say, you do the best you can. The rest is in the hand of the Creator.”

“That is a nice thing to say. You don’t believe it, do you?”

“It is what my aunt says.”

I was sanguine when I left Nell, but as I rode the subway home I was struck by how horrifically wrong things could have gone, and not only from taking home a stranger; from any arbitrary deed committed or not committed, by yourself or anyone else. A rushed decision, haphazard luck, bad timing. The world was full of disasters-in-waiting. It made me numb to think about, until the only way I could keep from being consumed by paralysis was to grasp that paralysis was exactly the trap laid by my enemies.

Once I saw this I tried to let the entire episode flow into the past. I knew the larger pattern and meaning, but it was not the rope that would hang me. Beyond that, I tried to find in myself the smallest parcel of empathy for Anna. More than that I could not do, but that tiny parcel was enough. From no higher principle than I believed forgiveness a virtue. Not a moral one, simply the self-preserving virtue of knowing the heart that cannot expand in forgiveness — even for those who slight it, even for those who have no claim to it whatsoever — is the most devilish instrument in the world.

It had been a wretched spring and, as I boarded the flight to Brazil, I was glad to be putting it behind me for what I hoped would be a new start. By the time I changed planes in Atlanta the hot air felt restorative, and I started immediately to relax, pleased to be out of the city, as the heat made me sweat and aware of my own body. Before boarding my onward flight I checked my messages, and saw Nicola had sent me a text telling me she would be in New York that week. I wrote back to let her know I would be out of town, then downed a sleeping pill.

As I turned on my noise-canceling headphones the artificial quietude was flooded by sour memories and the crippling feeling of a vast, cosmic emptiness. I realized I had lost my orientation, would not even know how to properly describe myself other than the role required of me in a particular context. My present role was traveler on an airplane, and I could neither name any self nor feel anything solid beyond the contours of my seat pushing up from the floor of the suspended flying machine. I had no other beliefs. The feeling attacked violently, from deep within, threatening to overwhelm all my faculties, until finally I plugged my headphones into the jack and turned on the in-flight entertainment system to crowd out the emptiness.

Twenty minutes into the movie, I started to doze off from the pill, and went to the bathroom to remove my contact lenses and brush my teeth.