He comes into the room where he last saw Winnie. This is the display model; it has been decorated so that perky sales agents can inspire prospective residents with visions of the kind of life their exorbitantly high mortgage can purchase for them. The walls have been painted a soothing shade of mint green. There is a comfortable arrangement of camel-colored suede furniture in one corner. One chair is draped with a fuzzy, avocado-hued chenille throw. Ryan tries to imagine getting comfortable in this room. He can’t. The thought gives him a headache.

There is also a large white bed, a cast-iron four-poster looped with gauze that (Ryan knows from experience) will have to be washed every goddamn week to keep from getting dusty. More meaningless garniture. More curls of shaved beet. He imagines making love to his fiancée in that bed, in that engulfing marshmallow-soft nest. Imagines her yielding body, her blank eyes staring up at him.

What is wrong with him? He presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. These things sell. These are what people want. Why should they annoy him so? Why does he suddenly long for the smell of motor oil and rust and honey?

“Winnie!” he whispers loudly, looking wildly about the room. “Winnie, for God’s sake!”

Then, she is there. Sitting on the bed.

The transformation is complete. She is slender and sylphlike, with a delicate face and vacant eyes.

She looks, Ryan notices with sudden horror, exactly like his fiancée.

She is staring out the window, thinking unfathomable thoughts. Her hair shines, her face is perfect, her nails gleam, her skin is smooth as glass. She is perfect and perfectly self-contained.