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“You have stage fright?”

“Yeah. It seems to be getting worse. Used to be, it wouldn’t have been a problem to play for one person—it was standing in front of an audience that freaked me out. Sometimes the stress makes me time travel.”

I think about that. “It’s interesting that you don’t mind being naked in front of me, but playing for me is difficult.”

“I know,” Alba says. “I think it has to do with the way I was taught. My grandfather was kind of an—intense teacher. And I’ve been running around naked since I was little; I have to just not worry about that, or I would die of shame whenever I time travel. The nakedness is just my shell. The playing, that’s my soul, there.”

“But, you’re so good; why are you afraid?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Why is anyone afraid? Why make art if you aren’t going to put it out there . . . ? Do you get writer’s block?” she asks me.

“It’s my spiritual homeland.”

“But you want to write?” she prods.

“Maybe,” I tell her. “I like to write for myself—journals—and for my friends—emails and letters. I don’t have any trouble doing that. I enjoy it.”

“I’m the same,” Alba says, “I write music because I have ideas, and I want to hear them. I don’t need an audience.”

“Maybe you could make recordings? You know, for posterity. You could have an audience, but you wouldn’t have to deal with them.”

An expression I can’t quite identify passes across Alba’s face. Sadness? Impatience? Weariness? She says, “It’s okay, Zach, really. The future doesn’t need my music, it has enough problems. I’m okay just playing for myself. Or, you know, you can be my audience, if you want. Since you’ve seen me naked and all.” She looks away, but I can hear her smiling.

“I’d like that,” I say. Alba’s skin is warm again and I run my hands over her belly and breasts. She turns her head and kisses me not quite on the lips. I take off my glasses, and we make love more deliberately, less haphazardly, than we did last night. Last night felt like a mutual claiming of territory, declarations of sovereignty. This morning, we are surveying, mapping borders and natural resources. We take it slow.

Afterward, she decides to have a bath. I remain in bed, listening to the water running in her bathroom through the closed door, feeling satiated but twitchy from nicotine withdrawal, happy as a child to be in someone else’s bed in someone else’s house.

Alba’s question echoes at me. Why make art? If the future doesn’t need her sonata or my novel, why make anything? I don’t have an answer; it seems like trying to justify breathing, or having more than one color, or consciousness: The answer must be so simple because everything I care about depends on it.

I realize that I’ve been listening to bathwater for a long time, longer than it should take to run a bath. I get up and knock on the bathroom door. Alba doesn’t answer. I open the door and find water overflowing and—no Alba.

I turn off the faucet, drain some of the water and begin to mop the wet floor with towels.

It’s 11:18. Caralora said she’d come by at noon to drop me back at my car. I didn’t like leaving it in Uptown last night and I’ll feel better when I lay eyes on it again. I text her that Alba has disappeared and ask how long she usually takes to return.

Welcome to my world, Caralora replies. A second text: variable. When Charisse told me that Alba and Caralora were high school sweethearts I had trouble imagining it, but these texts sound fondly exasperated, like they’ve been married for forty years.

I wander around the house, looking but not touching. I walk upstairs. In the master bedroom, both nightstands are heaped with books, small framed photos, lip balm, phone chargers. One side has a faded wedding photo of a smiling Black couple embracing in front of a building that looks more academic than religious; the clothes indicate that it’s the 1970s. Beck’s parents? The other nightstand has a baby photo: a plump Alba crouching on the carpet, glaring at the camera. When I look more carefully, I see a man in the background. He’s sitting on the floor, leaning against a wall; his hair is white; he’s shirtless and wears jeans. One leg is bent and his thin arm wraps around it. His feet are bare. He is looking at the camera, too, smiling. The resemblance between baby and man is unmistakable. This is Alba’s father.

In the living room there are thousands of books, mostly art books. There seem to be two collections, maybe three: Someone likes Aubrey Beardsley and Kiki Smith, someone has a lot of books on Dada, religion, African sculpture and conceptual art, and then there are books in German and French, poetry and novels. I pull out a biography of Heinrich von Kleist and the pages are heavily annotated in a small, neat hand.

I decide I’d better eat something. I’m standing in front of the fridge, eating ham slices directly from a ziplock package, when I hear a radio playing in the basement; a thin, girlish voice sings a folk song I’m not familiar with; the voice is mournful, as though the girl is singing to someone who’s far away, or dead. Just as I’m beginning to feel thoroughly creeped out, it stops. I wait, listening, my heart pounding, but the voice is silent.

A car pulls into the driveway. I hastily put the ham back and close the fridge, fearing that Alba’s parents are home, but when I peek through the blinds I see Caralora sitting behind the wheel of a gray SUV, tapping at her phone. Mine vibrates. Be right out, I text her, and then scamper back to Alba’s room to gather my stuff. I fold Alba’s clothes and put them on the bed, scrawl a note to her and can’t decide how to sign it (love? thanks? yours? in haste? best wishes?). I give up and just sign my initials, and run for the back door as Caralora leans on the horn.

“Did Alba ever rematerialize?” she asks.

“No,” I tell her.

Caralora doesn’t seem too concerned. She starts the car and backs up cautiously. Last night Caralora was driving something much smaller, an electric car; this behemoth is oddly devoid of personal possessions and smells of plastic cleaner. “Is this a rental?”

“Yeah.”

“Where did you find a rental place open on New Year’s Day?”

“Nick knows somebody.”

“Thanks for going to all this trouble.” I have a sense of foreboding. Who rents a car just to drop someone off?