“But you still do it.”

“When I get the chance.”

“But surely … I mean, don’t you always win?”

He looked at her. He smiled, but the smile was cryptic … she couldn’t tell whether he was amused or disappointed.

“One hopes,” John Shaw said.

* * *

She walked back with him to the rooming house, attentive now, her fears beginning to abate, but still reluctant: how could she tell him? But she must. She used this time to observe him. What Dr. Kyriakides had told her was true: John wore his strangeness like a badge. There was no pinning down exactly what it was that made him different. His walk was a little ungainly; he was too tall; his eyes moved restlessly when he spoke. But none of that added up to anything significant. The real difference, she thought, was more subtle. Pheremones, or something on that level. She imagined that if he sat next to you on a bus you would notice him immediately—turn, look, maybe move to another seat. No reason, just this uneasiness. Something odd here.

It was almost dark, an early October dusk. The streetlights blinked on, casting complex shadows through the brittle trees. Coming up the porch stairs to the boardinghouse, Susan saw him hesitate, stiffen a moment, lock one hand in a fierce embrace of the banister. My God, she thought, it’s some kind of seizure—he’s sick—but it abated as quickly as it had come.

He straightened himself up and put his key in the door.

Susan said, “Will Amelie be here?”

“Amelie works a night shift at a restaurant on Yonge Street. She’s out by six most evenings.”

“You live with her?”

“No. I don’t live with her.”

The apartment seemed even more debased, in this light, than Susan had guessed from her earlier glimpse. It consisted of one main room abutting a closet-sized bedroom—she could make out the jumbled bedclothes through the door—and an even tinier kitchen. The place smelled greasy: Amelie’s dinner, Susan guessed, leftovers still congealing in the pan. Salvation Army furniture and a sad, dim floral wallpaper. Why would he live here? Why not a mansion—a palace? He could have had that. But he was sick, too … maybe that had something to do with it.