"But what do you mean 'it's over'? I'm still working on it."

"I can't believe it."

"Stop being so goddamn mysterious. I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."

"I don't believe you don't know. Where the hell have you been? Don't you read the newspapers?"

"Newspapers? Goddamit, say what you mean. I don't have time to read newspapers."

There was a silence on the other end, and for a moment Quinn felt that the conversation was over, that he had somehow fallen asleep and had just now woken up to find the telephone in his hand.

"Stillman jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge," Auster said. "He committed suicide two and a half months ago."

"You're lying."

"It was all over the papers. You can check for yourself."

Quinn said nothing.

"It was your Stillman," Auster went on. "The one who used to be a professor at Columbia. They say he died in mid-air, before he even hit the water."

"And Peter? What about Peter?"

"I have no idea."

"Does anybody know?"

"Impossible to say. You'd have to find that out yourself."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Quinn.

Then, without saying good-bye to Auster, he hung up. He took the other dime and used it to call Virginia Stillman. He still knew the number by heart.

A mechanical voice spoke the number back to him and announced that it had been disconnected. The voice then repeated the message, and afterwards the line went dead.

Quinn could not be sure what he felt. In those first moments, it was as though he felt nothing, as though the whole thing added up to nothing at all. He decided to postpone thinking about it. There would be time for that later, he thought. For now, the only thing that seemed to matter was going home. He would return to his apartment, take off his clothes, and sit in a hot bath. Then he would look through the new magazines, play a few records, do a little housecleaning. Then, perhaps, he would begin to think about it.

He walked back to 107th Street. The keys to his house were still in his pocket, and as he unlocked his front door and walked up the three flights to his apartment, he felt almost happy. But then he stepped into the apartment, and that was the end of that.

Everything had changed. It seemed like another place altogether, and Quinn thought he must have entered the wrong apartment by mistake. He backed into the hall and checked the number on the door. No, he had not been wrong. It was his apartment; it was his key that had opened the door. He walked back inside and took stock of the situation. The furniture had been rearranged. Where there had once been a table there was now a chair. Where there had once been a sofa there was now a table. There were new pictures on the walls, a new rug was on the floor. And his desk? He looked for it but could not find it. He studied the furniture more carefully and saw that it was not his. What had been there the last time he was in the apartment had been removed. His desk was gone, his books were gone, the child drawings of his dead son were gone. He went from the living room to the bedroom. His bed was gone, his bureau was gone. He opened the top drawer of the bureau that was there. Women's underthings lay tangled in random clumps: panties, bras, slips. The next drawer held women's sweaters. Quinn went no further than that. On a table near the bed there was a framed photograph of a blond, beefy-faced young man. Another photograph showed the same young man smiling, standing in the snow with his arm around an insipid-looking girl. She, too, was smiling. Behind them there was a ski slope, a man with two skis on his shoulder, and the blue winter sky.

Quinn went back to the living room and sat down in a chair. He saw a half-smoked cigarette with lipstick on it in an ashtray. He lit it up and smoked it. Then he went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and found some orange juice and a loaf of bread. He drank the juice, ate three slices of bread, and then returned to the living room, where he sat down in the chair -again. Fifteen minutes later he heard footsteps coming up the stairs, a jangling of keys outside the door, and then the girl from the photograph entered the apartment. She was wearing a white nurse's uniform and held a brown grocery bag in her arms. When she saw Quinn, she dropped the bag and screamed. Or else she screamed first and then dropped the bag. Quinn could never be sure which. The bag ripped open when it hit the floor, and milk gurgled in a white path toward the edge of the rug.

Quinn stood up, raised his hand in a gesture of peace, and told her not to worry. He wasn't going to hurt her. The only thing he wanted to know was why she was living in his apartment. He took the key from his pocket and held it up in the air, as if to prove his good intentions. It took him a while to convince her, but at last her panic subsided.

That did not mean she had begun to trust him or that she was any less afraid. She hung by the open door, ready to make a dash for it at the first sign of trouble. Quinn held his distance, not wanting to make things worse. His mouth kept talking, explaining again and again that she was living in his house. She clearly did not believe one word of it, but she listened in order to humor him, no doubt hoping that he would talk himself out and finally leave.

"I've been living here for a 'month," she said. "It's my apartment. I signed a year's lease."

"But why do I have the key?" Quinn asked for the seventh or eighth time. "Doesn't that convince you?"

"There are hundreds of ways you could have got that key."

"Didn't they tell you there was someone living here when you rented the place?"

"They said it was a writer. But he disappeared, hadn't paid his rent in months."

"That's me!" shouted Quinn. "I'm the writer!"

The girl looked him over coldly and laughed. "A writer? That's the funniest thing I ever heard. Just look at you. I've never seen a bigger mess in all my life."

"I've had some difficulties lately," muttered Quinn, by way of explanation. "But it's only temporary."

"The landlord told me he was glad to get rid of you anyway. He doesn't like tenants who don't have jobs, They use too much heat and run down the fixtures."

"Do you know what happened to my things?"

"What things?"

"My books. My furniture. My papers."

"I have no idea. They probably sold what they could and threw the rest away. Everything was cleared out before I moved in."

Quinn let out a deep sigh. He had come to the end of himself. He could feel it now, as though a great truth had finally dawned in him. There was nothing left.

"Do you realize what this means?" he asked.

"Frankly, I don't care," the girl said. "It's your problem, not mine. I just want you to get out of here. Right now. This is my place, and I want you out. If you don't leave, I'm going to call the police and have you arrested."

It didn't matter anymore. He could stand there arguing with the girl for the rest of the day, and still he wouldn't get his apartment back. It was gone, he was gone,. everything was gone. He stammered something inaudible, excused himself for taking up her time, and walked past her out the door.