“Go away.”

He stretched both arms out to the sides hands closed. He opened them slowly and in each was a small black bell. Saint Declan’s bell. Fingers extended, he gave each a shake. Their tinkle was light and crystalline. “I can go. But what if you have questions?”

“I don’t want you to answer my questions.”

Pouting, he jingled the bells again. “Brave girl. Dumb girl.” He put the bells on the windowsill, crossed the porch, and went down the stairs to the street. I hurried to the window to make sure he was gone.

Then I picked up the telephone and made two calls. I needed a taxi and I needed to make sure Frances Hatch was still at the Fieberglas Sanitorium.

“I gotta tell you, lady, this ride’s gonna cost you money. It’s about a half hour, forty-five minutes from here.”

“I understand that. Could we go now?”

“You betcha.”

We had been under way a few minutes before the cab driver spoke again. “You ever heard about bed mites?”

“Excuse me?”

“Bed mites. Ever heard of them?” We traded looks in the rear-view mirror. “Neither did I till the other day. Was watchin’ this documentary on TV about allergies. Ever notice how people think they’re intellectual because they watch the Discovery Channel? Not me; I just like finding out about the weird way the world works.

“Anyhow, there was this show on about human allergies. They got a new theory that things called bed mites cause a lot of them. They’re these microscopic bugs that live in our beds and pillows, the sheets.… They’re not dangerous or anything, but they leave droppings, if you know what I mean. And it’s the droppings human beings are allergic to. Strange, huh?”

Taken aback, I couldn’t stop myself from rudely blurting, “Did you make that up?”

“Nah, really, I saw it on this show! They suggested all these ways of protecting yourself if you’re allergic. Wrap your mattress and pillows in plastic, get an air cleaner to catch any droppings that might be floating in the air… No, it’s really true.”

Again we looked at each other in the mirror, and he nodded enthusiastically.

“That’s horrible!”

“Not for the bed mites.”

I laughed. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about them, despite all the chaos surrounding my life at that moment. I envisioned a beautiful woman getting into a freshly made bed and falling asleep. And then, like a scene in a David Lynch film, the camera goes in close on her pillow. Closer and closer until we see thousands and thousands of tiny white insects scurrying around, living their lives despite a huge human head in their midst.

I knew from high school biology class the world is infested with horrid microscopic creatures living happily off and in and on human beings but, thank God, we never know the difference. Yet sooner or later some of their droppings or their germs or their simple existences do touch us. If we’re lucky all we do is sneeze. If we’re not, they kill us. The metaphor, especially at that moment in my life, was clear and forbidding.

All the conscious lies and forgotten promises we breed, the cruel gestures, small and large. The lack of gratitude and unwillingness to share, the kindness not repaid, the slight returned. The selfishness, the chosen ignorance, the pointless theft, the fuck-you-I-come-first attitude that taints so much of life. All of them are bed mites we create. Growing up, we’re taught to accept them as a given. Age-old. Been around forever. They’re part of life. But they aren’t because in most cases when we stop and think, we’re instantly aware of how to avoid producing more of these revolting bugs and their shit.

As far as other people’s behavior is concerned, we learn how to “wrap our mattresses in plastic”—we learn how to protect ourselves. But more important is filtering our own words and conduct so that our “droppings” don’t enter others and make them sick.

What I had learned in one hideous moment at the stadium was that life is not usually ruined by any one crowning blow, KO punch, or single act of savagery. It is ruined by the thousands of “bed mites” our cruelty, indifference, and insensitivity breed in the beds of those we love or know.

“Do you have any music?”

He looked down at the seat next to him. “I do, but I don’t think you’d go for it. I got Voodoo Glow Skulls and Rocket from the Crypt.”

“Could you turn on the radio?”

“Sure.”

Thoughtfully, he searched through the channels till he came to classical music. Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival” was on, and for a while it calmed my heart. The night landscape did too as it slipped by outside in intermittent patches of glitter and dark. Towns at rest, people going home. A man leaving a liquor store. A boy on a bicycle rode furiously in front us on the road, turning again and again to see where we were, trying to keep ahead, red reflectors on the pedals. The lights in one house came on like an eye opening. A van pulled into a driveway, its exhaust smoke gray over night black.

“That’s funny.”

“What is?”

“The drive-in movie over there. They usually stop running it at the end of summer. Who wants to go to the drive-in this time of year? It’s too cold.”

I looked where he was pointing and what I saw meant nothing for a moment. On the giant screen, people bustled around inside a busy store. Then Hugh Oakley entered the picture. Standing in front of a full-length mirror, he tried on a baseball cap. It was the day we almost slept together for the first time, when we went to the Gap store in New York instead and made out in the dressing room. I come up behind him with a pair of trousers in my hand and say something. He nods and follows me to the back of the store.

At a drive-in theater in Somewhere, New York, a scene from a day in my life was showing on a screen forty feet high.

“Look at that, willya? No cars in there! Who are they showing the movie to?”

The parking lot was empty.

“Could you turn the music up, please?”

The parking lot of Fieberglas Sanatorium was not empty. We arrived around nine at night, but there were still many cars parked. We pulled up to the brightly lit front door. I looked at the building and was surprised at the stillness in my heart.

“Are you visiting someone in there?”

“Yes. An old friend.”

The driver ducked his head so he could see the building better through the windshield. “Must have money to be staying in a place like this.”

I looked at the back of his head. The hair had recently been cut—it was all precise angles against perfectly white skin. From behind, he looked like a soldier or a little boy. “What’s your name?”

“My name? Erik. Erik Peterson. Why?”

“Could you wait here while I go in, Erik? I’ll pay you for your time.”

“You know, I was planning on waiting for you anyway. Didn’t think you’d want to stay around here very long, especially this time of night. You’ll be going back to Crane’s View?”

He turned and smiled at me. A neighborly smile, nothing behind it but a kind and considerate man.

“Yes. Thank you. But I might be a while.”

“No problem.” He held up a Watchman miniature television. “The last episode of Neverwhere is on in ten minutes. Gotta see that.”

I got out of the taxi and started toward the door. Behind me he called out, “What’s your name?”

“Miranda.”

“I’ll be right here, Miranda. You take your time.” I took a few steps and he said, “When we drive back home, I’ll tell you about hyacinth macaws.”

“Are they related to bed mites?”

“No, they’re birds. Another documentary I saw after the bed mites.” He looked down. The dancing gray-blue flicker of the television screen reflected off his face. I was so glad he was there.

Opening the heavy front door this time, I was immediately struck by how quiet and empty the place was. My leather heels on the stone floors were a riot of noise. A middle-aged nurse sat at the reception desk reading. No one else was around. I walked over and waited for her attention but she didn’t look up. Reading a page of her book upside down, I saw it was poetry. The first line of one poem read: “Bend your back to it, sir: for it will snow all night.”