“How’d he find us here?”

Mimi, in her outsized blazer and track pants, touched him on his bare shoulder. He suddenly felt terribly naked. He backed out of the bathroom, shoving Mimi aside, and numbly pulled on his jeans and a shapeless sweatshirt that smelled of Mimi and had long curly hairs lurking in the fabric that stuck to his face like cobwebs. He jammed his feet into his sneakers.

He realized that he’d had to step over his brother’s body six times to do this.

He looked at his brother again. He couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. The abraded belly. The rictus. His balls, shrunk to an albino walnut, his cock shriveled up to unrecognizability. The hair, curly, matted all over his body, patchily rubbed away.

He paced in the little run beside the bed, the only pacing room he had that didn’t require stepping over George’s body, back and forth, two paces, turn, two paces, turn.

“I’m going to cover him up,” Mimi said.

“Good, fine,” Alan said.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes, fine,” Alan said.

“Are you freaking out?”