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a female chiropractor from Nigeria and I told her to look you up. I’ve forgotten her name. Do you like my new name cards? I can see you now, looking down your nose.” Jerry held the name cards out, arrayed like a poker hand in his palm. Spinal-column name cards, the letters of Marge’s name spaced evenly along the vertebrae and made to look like the ligaments and muscles that supported them. His sister-in-law was fifty-two years old, the same age, of course, as Charlotte would have been. Their birthday was January 1, a date that had let them easily calculate their ages throughout their lives. When Charlotte’s cancer finally killed her she’d been forty-seven years, one hundred and forty-seven days old—that had been on May 27, 1978. Now, more than five years after her death, Jerry was ten years older, he was fifty-seven, and would not marry again. He had occasionally imagined that he might marry Marge, but that had only been a game. His love for Charlotte had been too complete for him to see her face again, hellishly housing the countenance of Marge.
    Jerry took a second scotch with him to the shower and when he came out a plate of West African curry and a bottle of Star beer were set out nicely on the dining-room table. Jules had finished ironing and had put on a white shirt, something he always did for dinner. It was nearly five-thirty and Jerry imagined the chief custodian over at the school, letting people see him preparing to leave. He sighed and said, “I would love to be able to stay in tonight, but I have a meeting.” His comment was not so much intended for Jules, but was a testament to the vocal habits of those who live alone, and Jules did not reply.
    Jerry finished his dinner and got up from the table at five thirty-five. He put his jacket back on and picked up his folder of meeting materials. There would be time to spare, but he did not want to come back into his flat after getting the chief custodian into the copy room. Jules would clean up and leave the flat by seven, locking it and making his way to Moroko where he lived. Jerry had been to Jules’s house once or twice and knew it was a terrible, dark place, two small rooms housing Jules and his wife and children. Jerry paid Jules well—at three hundred naira a month he was the highest paid of all the stewards in the building—and since he worked for a single man he had the easiest job. Whenever Jerry had a dinner party he paid Jules overtime.
    Since he was going out on school business, Jerry took the van, starting the engine and waving to the security guards as he drove out through the gate. It would take the chief custodian ten minutes to walk to his bus stop, so Jerry drove slowly, circling out past the Eko Hotel and then back to where the chief custodian stood.
    â€œGood evening, sir,” he said, climbing quickly into the van. “Tonight we will find our thief.”
    Jerry turned the van around and drove, this time all the way out to Bar Beach, while the chief custodian snuggled down onto the van’s floor, pulling a blanket from the seat and covering himself.
    â€œI don’t want to go back too soon,” said Jerry.
    â€œNo, sir,” came a muffled reply.
    The Bar Beach road wasn’t crowded so Jerry pulled onto the shoulder, looking out over the sand dunes and trying to see what progress the sea had made in taking back the reclaimed land. All of Victoria Island, the land where the school and the flats stood, had once been underwater, yet now it held some of the most expensive homes in Lagos, with rents and purchase prices doubling and tripling every year. Jerry looked out at the water and the ships as they moved into Apapa, the Lagos port. Nigeria was such a difficult, troublesome country that even after three years he marveled that he was living in such a place. Before Charlotte’s death he had been content with his school administrator’s job in Oregon. Ironically it had been