“Where did Blix fit in? Did you know her at the time of the accident?”

“Really, Marnie? Really, do we have to talk about this?” He looks back down at the dough. “Blix found me one day in Manhattan. It was after. Long after. I was rich, living in a luxury hotel, eating room service every night, drinking myself to death, or trying to. And my therapist said it was time I went and looked at art again, tried to make friends with it. ‘Art,’ she said, ‘wasn’t the thing that hurt you. And maybe it has the power to heal you. You should give it a chance.’ So I got to the Museum of Modern Art and I tried to make myself go inside. Walked five steps in, and then turned around and went back out. Then I talked to myself and went in again, and turned around and came back out. Five times, in and out again, in and out. And then a voice said to me, ‘Are you imitating a person who’s attached to an invisible rubber band? Is this an art installation you’re doing outside the museum? Because I’m sold, if that’s what this is.’ My immediate response was that I wanted to kill whoever had said that, but then I saw this old lady standing there wearing crazy clothes, with her hair sticking up and her eyes so kind and compassionate. ‘Hi, I’m Blix,’ she said. And you know how she is—how those eyes would reach over and look right into you! Oh my God! The first person who ever looked at me like that. ‘Or maybe,’ she said, ‘there’s something inside that you can’t bear to see.’ She’s there, just looking at me, human to human. It was like she didn’t even see all my scars. ‘Maybe there’s something inside that you can’t bear to see.’” He shakes his head, remembering.

“Wow,” I say.

“Yeah. So she takes me by the arm—my arm, which was still hurting, I’ll have you know, but Blix didn’t know from pain—and we go have a cup of coffee together. I’m too exhausted to resist her. I feel like I’m under hypnosis or something. She takes me to this dark restaurant, like she knew instinctively that’s what I needed, some shadows, and we sit in the back. And she says, ‘Tell me.’ So . . . I told her a bit of the story. And she wanted to hear all of it. I said no at first, but then the story starts pouring out of me. And it was the first time I’d told it. The fire, the operations, the therapist. She listened and then she said we should go into the museum together. And so we did.”

“What happened?”

“Before we even got to the art, a child started screaming at the sight of me, and old Blix—well, she was not having any of that. She held on to me, walked me through the museum. Steeled herself for whatever was going to happen. Gave me her strength. I could feel it flowing to me. After that, I started meeting her every week. We didn’t go to the art museum anymore, where people stared at me. She would come to my fancy hotel room with the maid service and the room service, and we’d just sit there and talk. About life, about art, about politics. And then one day she said to me, ‘Listen, I like the look of you, and this is no fucking way to live your life. This is false and harmful and dangerous to your health. You’re coming to live in my building with me. In Brooklyn. You’ll have people.’ And so I did.

“I didn’t want any people, mind you, so I saw that as a big drawback, but I got Houndy and Jessica and Sammy in the bargain. And Lola. Five people, counting Blix. All I could handle. I took the job writing up symptoms. Because I wanted something to do. I thought this was the way to do it, stay so busy thinking about other things—people’s symptoms—that I wouldn’t think. And it works. I get to stay away from the outside world, from the children who cry when they see me. I don’t go out. I don’t have to. Why should I let in the awfulness out there, the people who stare at me and make me feel like a freak?”

“Did . . . Blix think that was okay? You not going out?”

“Well, yes and no. She gave me the space to live my life, and I loved her for it, and when she was sick, I didn’t say ‘Go to the hospital, get your tumor looked at, let them cut you up,’ because I knew that wasn’t what she wanted to do, and why should she? And she didn’t say to me, ‘Why aren’t you trying to find art again? Why aren’t you out there working on being a social guy?’ We didn’t do that to each other. I knew why she didn’t want to turn herself over to surgeons, and she knew why I needed to mend in the quiet.”

I am having a traitorous thought. I am thinking that maybe it would have worked out better for him if, say, she had pushed him just a little, nudged him back into life. Not right away, of course—I’m sure it took everything to dislodge him from his grief and get him to move to Brooklyn. But at some point.

As if he’s reading my thoughts, he says, “Things changed after a while, though. She would come down and put on music and say it was time that we danced together. Or she’d insist that I come upstairs to her dinner parties and mingle with nice people who weren’t going to stare. People she’d probably prepared in advance. She said once—she said it was time I realized that most people are way too self-absorbed to be looking at somebody like me and thinking pitying thoughts. She said—ha! I still can’t get over this—she said that it would be such a more wonderful world if people did care enough to stare. But they don’t, she said. They’re thinking of their own lives.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Then she started in with this campaign to make me believe in love again. She claimed to have magic, and she kept saying there was love coming for me.” He wiggles his floury fingers in the air and rolls his eyes. “She and Lola were these old ladies, always trying to drag the topic over to love. Like we were in a sitcom or a happily-ever-after Disney movie. Like Beauty and the Beast! One day we had an actual serious conversation about whether or not Belle—was that her name?—yeah, whether Belle really loved the beast from the beginning or if it was just pity.” He eases the piecrust into the pie pan, turning it just so, tilting his head while he works it perfectly. “Read the text, people! It’s fear and pity. Fear and pity—how’s that as a cocktail for a doomed relationship?”

I can’t speak. I’ve put down the knife I’m scraping the carrots with, because my hands seem to be shaking.

“Anyway,” he says. “Here are the facts I’ve accepted: Anneliese will always be dead. I always will have tried to get to her in time and failed. When it really counted, I was powerless to change the outcome.” He swallows and goes silent for a moment. Then he says, “You know, I used to dream that she made the coffee and the explosion didn’t happen. Then I’d dream that the explosion happened, but that she and I weren’t there; we came back to a studio that was gone but we were safe. Then other times, I’d dream that she lived through the burns and the pain and didn’t love me anymore. So that’s my life now. I endure. I’m not waiting to die anymore, but I’ll never be the way I was before.”

My voice feels clotted over when I speak. “Do you ever go anywhere? At all?”

He swings his eyes over to me, like he’s just remembered I’m there. “Ah, goodie, another caseworker! Yes. For your information, I do. I walk sometimes at night, or I go to the twenty-four-hour gym and work out with weights in the back room in the middle of the night where no one has to see me.”

“What is this feeling about people having to see you? You’re you! You’re a person in the world, and okay, so you have scars. Does that mean people can’t look at you? Why can’t we just go somewhere you and me? In the daytime? We could take the dog for a walk maybe. We don’t have to care what people think.”

“Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? I don’t need anything that’s out there in the world. I don’t want to go fucking out. And you will find in your life that a man who lives alone with a cat doesn’t usually want to be walking a dog. What’s next is that I’m going to Wyoming, where my sister has a house in the middle of nowhere with a spare wing for me. She’s good at Scrabble and she reads books. And I get along with her fine.”

“God, Patrick, I have to say that sounds like giving up.”

“Yeah, well, I get to do that if I want to. I have the right to give up after what I went through.” He leans down and scratches Bedford’s ears. “Don’t I, boy? You want to give up, too? Is this the good boy who’d like to give up? Oh, yes you would! Oh, yes you would!”

“But isn’t there some kind of art you want to do? Maybe, okay, not sculpture, but something else? Painting? Drawing? Photography? You’re a creative guy, and you’ve convinced yourself to just shut off that whole part of your personality.”

“Wow, look at the time!” he says sarcastically.

“I know. I shouldn’t be offering any advice to anybody. Look at what a mess I’ve made of things. Also, may I just say that I think you have potential as a dog person. Just saying.”