“Well, actually-”

“We could get together and whip one up after I finish work. I could come to your house.”

“Apartment,” he said without planning to.

“I could come to your apartment.”

She would walk into his den and see the patio door where the burglar had slipped through. “Hmm,” she would muse aloud. She would turn and examine Liam’s face, cocking her head appraisingly. “In my experience,” she would say, “a memory that’s associated with trauma…” Or, “A memory that’s imprinted in someone roused from deep sleep…”

Oh, don’t be absurd. This was just a glorified secretary, working at a made-up job her mother had cadged from a friend.

But even as he was thinking that, Liam was saying, “Well, if you’re sure you can spare the time.”

“I have all the time in the world! I get off at five o’clock today. Here,” she said, and she reached to the floor for her purse and turned it upside down over the table. A wallet and keys and pill bottles and bits of paper fell out. She chose one of the bits of paper-a ruled sheet torn from a memo pad-and thrust it toward him. Milk, toothpaste, plant food, he read. “Write down your address,” she ordered. “Is it someplace I can find?”

“It’s just up Charles near the Beltway.”

“Perfect! Write your phone number too. Darn it, where’s my pen?”

“I have a pen,” he said.

“Hello? Hello?” she shouted.

Liam was startled, until he realized she was calling their waitress. “Can we get our bill?” she asked when the woman appeared.

Without speaking, the woman dug in her housecoat pocket and handed over a chit of paper that seemed as unofficial as Eunice’s memo page. Liam said, “Please, let me pay.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” Eunice said.

“No, really, I insist.”

“Liam!” she barked, and she sent him a mock frown. “We’ll hear no more about this. You can buy me coffee once you land a job.”

Liam looked up at their waitress and found her frowning at him too, but with an expression of utter contempt. He bent meekly over the memo page and wrote down his address.

There was no way on earth that he could work for Cope Development, even if they were misguided enough to offer him a position. And it was nice of Eunice to take an interest, of course; but face it: she was really sort of… hapless. People like Eunice just never had quite figured out how to get along in the world. They might be perfectly intelligent, but they were subject to speckles and flushes; their purses resembled wastepaper baskets; they stepped on their own skirts.

Actually, Eunice was the only person he could think of who answered to that description. But still, there was something familiar about her.

He would phone her at Cope Development and cancel their appointment. “I can’t work there!” he would say. “I wouldn’t fit in. Thanks anyhow.”

When he picked up the receiver, though, he realized he didn’t know her last name. Admittedly, this was not an insurmountable problem. How many Eunices were they likely to have on their payroll? But he deplored the sound of it-“May I please speak to Eunice?” So unprofessional.

“This is Liam Pennywell calling Mr. Cope’s assistant. Eunice, I believe it was.”

They would take him for some kind of stalker.

He didn’t make the call.

Though a part of him knew full well what a weak excuse that was.

After lunch-a peanut-butter sandwich-he vacuumed his apartment and dusted all the furniture and fixed a pitcher of iced tea. He found himself talking silently to Eunice as he worked. Somehow, he progressed from “The fact is that I’m not the developer type” to “I’ve had a hard time with this amnesia issue; maybe you can understand.” He pictured her nodding sagely, matter-of-factly, as if this syndrome were old news to her. “Let’s review this for a moment, shall we?” she might say. Or, “A lot of times, when Mr. C. forgets, I’ve learned that it helps to…” To what? Liam couldn’t invent an end for that sentence.

It dawned on him that what he wanted from her was not so much to recover the burglar incident as to make sense of his forgetting it. He wanted her to say, “Oh, yes. I’ve seen this before; it’s nothing new. Other people have these holes in their lives.”

True, various doctors had said that already, but that was different. Why was it different? He couldn’t explain. Something lurked at the edge of his mind but he couldn’t quite grab hold of it.

He sat down in his rocker and stayed there, empty-headed, hands loose on his thighs. Long ago when he was young he used to envision old age this way: man in a rocker, idle. He had read somewhere that old people could sit in their chairs and watch their memories roll past like movies, endlessly entertaining; but so far that hadn’t happened to him. He was beginning to think it never would.

He was glad he hadn’t canceled Eunice’s visit.

She showed up just before six o’clock-later than he had expected. He’d started growing a little fidgety. She was carrying a bag of fried chicken from a takeout place. “I thought we could have supper while we worked,” she said. “I hope you haven’t already fixed us something.”

“Why… no, I haven’t,” Liam said.

Fried chicken tended to upset his stomach, but he had to admit it smelled delicious. He took the bag from her and placed it on the table, assuming they would eat later. Eunice, however, made a beeline for his kitchen. “Plates? Silver?” she asked.

“Oh, um, plates are in that cupboard to your left.”

She rattled among the cabinets and drawers while Liam drew a wad of paper napkins from the takeout bag. “I brought you some materials describing the company,” she called over her shoulder. “Just so you can sound informed about where you’re applying.”

Liam said, “Ah. The company. Well. I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure the company and I would be such a very good match.”

“Not sure!”

She stopped midway to the table, holding an armful of dishes and silverware.

“I guess at heart I’m still a teacher,” he told her.

“Oh, change is always difficult,” she said.

He nodded.

“But if you just gave this a try; just tried it to see how you liked it…” She set the dishes on the table and began distributing them. “Do you have any soft drinks?”

“No, only iced tea,” Liam said. “Or, wait. I think my daughter may have left some Diet Coke.”

“I didn’t know you had a daughter!” Eunice said. She sounded unduly taken aback, as if she knew everything else about him.

“I have three, in fact,” Liam said.

“So you’re, what? Divorced? Widowed?”

“Both,” Liam said. “Which did you want?”

Eunice said, “Excuse me?” She seemed to be having one of her flushes.

“Iced tea or Diet Coke?”

“Oh! Diet Coke, please.”

Liam found a Diet Coke behind the milk and brought it to the table, along with the pitcher of tea for himself. “My refrigerator dispenses ice directly through the door,” he told Eunice. “Would you like some for your Coke?”

“No, thanks, I’ll just drink from the can.”

She was setting out pieces of chicken on a platter. There were biscuits, too, he saw, but no vegetable. He debated fixing a salad but decided against it; too time-consuming. He sat down in his usual place. Eunice took the chair to his left. She smoothed a napkin across her lap and gazed around. “This is a nice apartment,” she said.

“Thanks. I don’t feel entirely settled yet.”

“You’ve just moved in?”

“A few weeks ago.”

He took a drumstick from the platter and put it on his plate. Eunice chose a wing.

“The burglary happened the first night I was here,” he told her. “I went to sleep perfectly fine, and I woke up in the hospital.”

“That’s terrible,” Eunice said. “Didn’t you want to move out again right away?”

“Well, it was more a matter of… I was more concerned about remembering what had happened,” Liam said. “I felt as if I had leapt this sort of ditch. This gap of time that I had skipped completely. I hate that feeling! I hate forgetting.”