“Why?”

She has the look on her face of someone who didn’t prepare an answer to that question. She doesn’t know why she had to find him, he suspects. She likes to know what’s going on, is all. She gets up off the futon and wanders around the studio.

“Fritzie.”

“What?”

“Please. Don’t start touching things in here. There’s a lot of wet paint.”

“I know.”

She keeps walking around, so he lies back down and closes his eyes again. This futon is not horrible. He’s pleased with himself for thinking of coming in here to sleep as a solution to the houseguest situation.

“You know why I came in here, Patrick? For reals?”

“Why?”

“Because you know how Ariana is going to go across country and ask people questions and film them?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Well, I decided that I’m going to ask people questions, too, and I am starting with you.”

“And this couldn’t have waited until it was daytime?”

“Patrick! It is daytime. The sun just didn’t wake up yet.”

“Okay. I like it best when the sun wakes up.”

“It will soon. So are you ready for my questions? I have a bunch.”

“Okay. Can I close my eyes while I answer them?”

“Sure. Hey, would you ever like to go with me to the planetarium?”

“Maybe.”

“Haha, Patrick! That wasn’t the real question for the test. I was just wanting to know. Okay, now we’re starting. That question had an asterisk by it. You know what an asterisk is?”

“Yes.”

“It means it’s not really real.”

“Go easy on me, okay?”

“Do you love Marnie?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love me?”

“Of course.”

“Do you love potato chips?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, Patrick, none of those were the real questions either. I just wanted to know how much love you’ve got in ya. But you are doing very, very well. Okay, now we start. What was your favorite subject in school?”

“Art and math.”

“Did you play sports?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Uncoordinated.”

“What does that mean?”

“It meant I was too busy drawing pictures.”

“Who is your favorite person in the world?”

“Um. Stephen Colbert.”

“Who is that?”

“A comedian.”

“No. It has to be someone you know.”

“Um, Paco.”

“Someone in our house!”

“Oh, then you.”

“Is that really true?”

“One thousand percent true.”

“I don’t believe you. I think it’s Marnie.”

“Yeah, maybe we should say Marnie so she doesn’t get upset.”

“Okayyyy. When you met my mom, did you love her?”

“Fritzie? This is kind of . . .”

“Just answer.”

“No.”

“No, you didn’t?”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t know her.”

“Okay. No, that’s okay. I get it. Okay, now, next question is: When you and Marnie have a baby together sometime, do you want it to be a girl or a boy?”

He gets up on one elbow. “Nope, nope, nope. Question time is over.”

“Okay, okay! Um . . . what time on the clock is your favorite time?”

“I have no favorite time on a clock.”

“Mine is 12:34. Get it? One, two, three, four.”

“Let’s go get some breakfast. Are other people up?”

“Wait. Do you like to read the end of a book first?”

“I would never. Come on, let’s go see if anybody else is up.”

“What are you scared of?”

He’s quiet.

She looks at him. “I’m just going to read you the rest. What do you think you will say to me on the day my mum comes and gets me? Do you think you will be my dad when I’m a grown-up? Do you want more children, or just me? If you could somehow have the fire not happen, would you still want to love Marnie even if the other lady lived? Would you still want to have me at your house? What do you want for Christmas? Did you know you would be this sad? Do you think you are always going to be so sad? Do you think I am smart? And the last question: Do you really love me? Do you love me more than Roy? More than potato chips? More than painting?”

He sits on the side of the bed and looks at her. He can’t answer any more questions. His throat is tight.

“Let’s go make your grandmother some coffee,” he says.

“Patrick!” she says, and she’s laughing. “Millie is not my real grandmother!”

“Well, what is she?” he says. And she shrugs. She doesn’t have an answer for that one.

The sun is just starting to fight its way through the dusty kitchen windows in a way that makes him feel a keen sadness about the basic grime and clutter of life.

He is so tired that it takes tremendous difficulty to undertake the necessary nine steps that are required to get cups of coffee going, which involves first finding the filters and the coffee beans, then the grinder and the coffee press, as well as the cups, the spoons, the cream. The cups are in the dishwasher. His favorite one is missing. Also, in unrelated but also disappointing developments: the pumpkin pies were left out all night, and he forgot to do anything with the turkey roasting pan, so it’s sitting on the counter with turkey grease and parts congealing in a rather non-savory way.

Fritzie is dancing around with Bedford, who’s on his hind legs. Roy has come along to check out what’s for breakfast.

“Do you want some cereal?” Patrick asks Fritzie, and then he hears Millie say, “Well, g’morning.”

“Hi,” he says.

“I declare that I was up so late last night that I thought I’d sleep for days, but I can’t seem to stay asleep. I’m too excited to be here. Does that happen to you, Fritzie? Are you ever too excited to sleep?”

“Well,” says Fritzie. “There was one time when we were . . .” and off she goes into a long, rambling story that Patrick can’t pay attention to. It is all he can do to manage at last to pour Millie a cup of coffee and hand it to her, and smile back when she smiles. She is wearing a long blue quilted bathrobe, one that moms everywhere might be putting on all over America. She is very, very suburban mommish, he thinks, with her short petals of blonde-gray hair, all tucked under and organized, as though they had attended hair training school. She is youthful-looking, but he thinks that you would never see anybody under fifty doing that precise thing—whatever it is—with her hair.

Yes, she says, in answer to a question he forgot he had asked: a piece of toast would be wonderful.

He’s alarmingly distracted. He actually found himself awake at 5:14 a.m., an hour before Fritzie showed up and interrupted his catnap. He lay there with his pillow covering his face for some time, examining the new reality of sleeping on a futon in his studio while houseguests (he counts Ariana as well as Millie and Fritzie in this—the surprise women, as they were identified last night) plunder what is left of his solitude. He brought out all the facts of the matter and turned them over and over in his head, walking around them, asking himself some hard questions about how he should see this. On the one hand, he likes Millie just fine; it’s not that he doesn’t. He texts with her, after all. Recipes and such. She admires his baking abilities, says plenty of wonderful things about his sour cream coffee cake with the cinnamon crunch sprinkles on the top, for instance. Shares it on Facebook. And she has been known to make his Atlantic beach pie (made with a cracker and butter crust) for special occasions.