It was already 2:32 P.M. when I finished walking the 1,860 stairs down to the lobby, and I was exhausted, and Mr. Black seemed exhausted, too, so we went straight home. When we got to Mr. Black's door—this was just a few minutes ago—I was already making plans for next weekend, because we had to go to Far Rockaway, and Boerum Hill, and Long Island City, and if we had time also to Dumbo, but he interrupted me and said, "Listen. Oskar?" "That's my name, don't wear it out." "I think I'm finished." "Finished with what?" "I hope you understand." He stuck out his hand for a shake. "Finished with what?" "I've loved being with you. I've loved every second of it. You got me back into the world. That's the greatest thing anyone could have done for me. But now I think I'm finished. I hope you understand." His hand was still open, waiting for my hand.

I told him, "I don't understand."

I kicked his door and told him, "You're breaking your promise." I pushed him and shouted, "It isn't fair!"

I got on my tiptoes and put my mouth next to his ear and shouted, "Fuck you!"

No. I shook his hand...

"And then I came straight here, and now I don't know what to do."

As I had been telling the renter the story, he kept nodding his head and looking at my face. He stared at me so hard that I wondered if he wasn't listening to me at all, or if he was trying to hear something incredibly quiet underneath what I was saying, sort of like a metal detector, but for truth instead of metal.

I told him, "I've been searching for more than six months, and I don't know a single thing that I didn't know six months ago. And actually I have negative knowledge, because I skipped all of those French classes with Marcel. Also I've had to tell a googolplex lies, which doesn't make me feel good about myself, and I've bothered a lot of people who I've probably ruined my chances of ever being real friends with, and I miss my dad more now than when I started, even though the whole point was to stop missing him."

I told him, "It's starting to hurt too much."

He wrote, "What is?"

Then I did something that surprised even me. I said, "Hold on," and I ran down the 72 stairs, across the street, right past Stan, even though he was saying "You've got mail!" and up the 105 stairs. The apartment was empty. I wanted to hear beautiful music. I wanted Dad's whistling, and the scratching sound of his red pen, and the pendulum swinging in his closet, and him tying his shoelaces. I went to my room and got the phone. I ran back down the 105 stairs, past Stan, who was still saying "You've got mail!," back up the 72 stairs, and into Grandma's apartment. I went to the guest room. The renter was standing in exactly the same position, like I'd never left, or never been there at all. I took the phone out of the scarf that Grandma was never able to finish, plugged it in, and played those first five messages for him. He didn't show anything on his face. He just looked at me. Not even at me, but into me, like his detector sensed some enormous truth deep inside me.

"No one else has ever heard that," I said.

"What about your mother?" he wrote.

"Especially not her."

He crossed his arms and held his hands in his armpits, which for him was like putting his hands over his mouth. I said, "Not even Grandma," and his hands started shaking, like birds trapped under a tablecloth. Finally he let them go. He wrote, "Maybe he saw what happened and ran in to save somebody." "He would have. That's what he was like." "He was a good person?" "He was the best person. But he was in the building for a meeting. And also he said he went up to the roof, so he must have been above where the plane hit, which means he didn't run in to save anyone." "Maybe he just said he was going to the roof." "Why would he do that?"

"What kind of meeting was it?" "He runs the family jewelry business. He has meetings all the time." "The family jewelry business?" "My grandpa started it." "Who's your grandpa?" "I don't know. He left my grandma before I was born. She says he could talk to animals and make a sculpture that was more real than the real thing." "What do you think?" "I don't think anyone can talk to animals. Except to dolphins, maybe. Or sign language to chimps." "What do you think about your grandpa?" "I don't think about him."

He pressed Play and listened to the messages again, and again I pressed Stop after the fifth was finished.

He wrote, "He sounds calm in the last message." I told him, "I read something in National Geographic about how, when an animal thinks it's going to die, it gets panicky and starts to act crazy. But when it knows it's going to die, it gets very, very calm." "Maybe he didn't want you to worry." Maybe. Maybe he didn't say he loved me because he loved me. But that wasn't a good enough explanation. I said, "I need to know how he died."

He flipped back and pointed at, "Why?"

"So I can stop inventing how he died. I'm always inventing."

He flipped back and pointed at, "I'm sorry."

"I found a bunch of videos on the Internet of bodies falling. They were on a Portuguese site, where there was all sorts of stuff they weren't showing here, even though it happened here. Whenever I want to try to learn about how Dad died, I have to go to a translator program and find out how to say things in different languages, like 'September,' which is 'Wrzesień,' or 'people jumping from burning buildings,' which is 'Menschen, die aus brennenden Gebäuden springen.' Then I Google those words. It makes me incredibly angry that people all over the world can know things that I can't, because it happened here, and happened to me, so shouldn't it be mine?

"I printed out the frames from the Portuguese videos and examined them extremely closely. There's one body that could be him. It's dressed like he was, and when I magnify it until the pixels are so big that it stops looking like a person, sometimes I can see glasses. Or I think I can. But I know I probably can't. It's just me wanting it to be him."

"You want him to have jumped?"

"I want to stop inventing. If I could know how he died, exactly how he died, I wouldn't have to invent him dying inside an elevator that was stuck between floors, which happened to some people, and I wouldn't have to imagine him trying to crawl down the outside of the building, which I saw a video of one person doing on a Polish site, or trying to use a tablecloth as a parachute, like some of the people who were in Windows on the World actually did. There were so many different ways to die, and I just need to know which was his."

He held out his hands like he wanted me to take them. "Are those tattoos?" He closed his right hand. I flipped back and pointed at "Why?" He took back his hands and wrote, "It's made things easier. Instead of writing yes and no all the time, I can show my hands." "But why just YES and NO?" "I only have two hands." "What about 'I'll think about it,' and 'probably,' and 'it's possible'?" He closed his eyes and concentrated for a few seconds. Then he shrugged his shoulders, just like Dad used to.

"Have you always been silent?" He opened his right hand. "Then why don't you talk?" He wrote, "I can't." "Why not?" He pointed at, "I can't." "Are your vocal cords broken or something?" "Something is broken." "When was the last time you talked?" "A long, long time ago." "What was the last word you said?" He flipped back and pointed at "I." "I was the last word you said?" He opened his left hand. "Does that even count as a word?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Do you try to talk?" "I know what will happen." "What?" He flipped back and pointed at, "I can't."