Something awful.

Benjamin said one word, very low; Amelie thought it was, “Leave.”

Roch turned away like a whipped child and lurched to the door.

Before he left he turned and pointed a trembling finger down at Amelie. He looked as if he was about to burst into tears.

“You,” he said. “You …cunt …”

And then fled.

And Amelie turned to look at Benjamin, and understood all at once what had happened:

He wasn’t Benjamin right now.

He was John.

He looked down at her in that way she hated, a mixture of pity and condescension at the back of his eyes. He started to say something—it might have been “I’m sorry.”

“Get out,” Amelie said. She was embarrassed, hurt, humiliated—she couldn’t stand him looking at her. “Just leave.”

His eyes lingered a moment longer. Then he nodded.

He went back to the bedroom for a shirt and a jacket, and then he left … but he stopped on the way out and picked up something that had slipped off the lamp-stand during his fight with Roch. It looked like a scrap of paper, Amelie thought … with maybe a phone number written on it.

3

It was near midnight when John called.

Susan had eaten dinner at the hotel coffee shop and had come back to her room to read, hiding from this strange city in the pages of a book. She had a Joyce Carol Oates novel and a Travis McGee mystery, both from the paperback rack in the lobby.