to talk. A repoussé silver frame shone by itself on a middle shelf, a few feet to her right, but she avoided looking over at it until she’d scanned everything in front of her. Van mixed drinks at a bar that opened to the living room, brought her one, and sat down on a leather sofa.
The picture was Van and his girlfriend, much younger, in wedding clothes. Ve- ronica crunched an ice cube from her drink, and looked at Van after a minute. “We don’t tell people we’re married,” he said, “not even you.” She felt sick and swallowed more ice, then asked if she could use his computer. There were no new emails, but she stared at the screen until Van moved behind her, put his hands in her hair.
She told him she didn’t think she could, now, but he said Trinh knew, that she was fond of Veronica. Veronica said maybe they should see what happened with the weather rst, and he drove her back to her hotel.
Alone in her room she parted the curtains an inch or so; the military ship was gone so she opened the drapes all the way. The city looked like a jewel box from that high up, like it could crumble and scatter with just a shake. Buildings that she knew were square appeared skewed and stretched, trapezoids instead. There were so many rooftops that at rst her eyes couldn’t rest on one, but then she started noticing tiny houses and sheds on top of roofs, and thought it would be fun to ride out a storm in one, hunker down. On the small hotel notepad she sketched a narrow, rounded two-story, added a tower to the top, and then looked back out the window for the building to place it on.
Van called and said there was something at his house she needed to see, asked her to take a cab back over right away. At the front door he took her hand and led her to the computer, where her email was still open. He placed her hand on the mouse and scrolled down to a message Enzo had sent a half-hour before, and they clicked it open. Pictures of Veronica, naked and sleeping, slowly opened down the screen. In the last one, Enzo’s hand held an open pocketknife to the inside of her elbow.
Veronica shook her head back and forth for a minute, said, “I didn’t know.”
Van said, “I know you share similar… predilections. But Veronica,” he started, and she held up her free hand to stop him, and promised him it was the last time. He reached down to the computer tower, held in a button, and in a few seconds the screen went dark. He sat down on the leather couch and patted the space next to him. When she nally sat, he pulled a blanket around them, and with the remote, turned on the television and found the weather.
The storm would miss them, was hitting far to the east. Wind slanted the news- caster, and the sound went out. The camera cut to a trembling street sign that soon lifted from the pole, and silently oated out of range.