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reddish-blond hair matted like grass. Behind him, he pulled two suitcases, his shoulders hunched. He wore a white T-shirt, blue-striped scrubs, and scuffed brown moccasins. Right before he reached the porch, he pulled off his round glasses and held them up to the rain. Then he duckedthrough the screen door and rubbed them with the underside of his T-shirt, leaving the suitcases outside to be splattered. When he finished, he slipped the glasses on again, hoisted the suitcases onto the porch, and walked into the house. The lights inside came on just as he disappeared from view.
    â€œBad trip,” joked Gabe, turning away from the window.
    â€œMaybe she felt sick,” I said.
    I was still looking; I thought one of them might open the drapes, and then I felt silly. It was night—who opened the drapes at night?
    â€œCould have at least helped him with the bags,” Gabe said.
    He wrapped our sandwiches in foil and put them in the cooler. I was filling water bottles up from the tap. The water was cloudy and tasted faintly metallic, but the landlord said this was normal.
    â€œHow old do you think they are?” I asked. “About our age?”
    â€œProbably,” said Gabe. “Late twenties, I’d say.”
    We were twenty-four. Most of the neuroscientists we worked with were in their fifties and sixties, and Keller was over fifty himself.
    A light came on in the second floor of the neighbor’s house. Gabe and I leaned toward the kitchen window.
    â€œWhat is it people do around here, when someone new moves into the neighborhood?” he asked. “Don’t they bring over a casserole?”
    â€œCasserole,” I said. “That’s pretty antiquated, don’t you think?”
    But we each harbored the hope that casserole would be delivered to our porch the next morning, that we would all eat together in the dim light afforded by the old dining room bulb. We hoped for the arrival of the Welcome Wagon, something we had heard our parents talk about, as if the Welcome Wagon would drive right out of their generation and into ours. But weeks passed, and we heard nothing from theneighbors, though we spotted them now and then. Evenings, I saw the woman getting out of the Honda, her arms covered in a gray film of dirt. Other times I saw her on the porch, wearing satiny pink shorts and a thin tank top, as if she were lounging in the privacy of her bedroom. She also had an array of little dresses that she wore with the black boots—ruffled miniature things in shades of coral and lime, or stark black-and-white shifts with pointed shoulder pads. But she didn’t seem to go anywhere in them: whenever I saw her coming or going, she was in shorts and a T-shirt, her body covered in that sheer coating of dirt.
    In each incarnation, I found her beautiful, though I couldn’t quite say why. Because she never looked our way, I had ample time to study her without fear of eye contact. She had a narrow face with angular bones that rose prominently beneath the skin: high, sharp cheekbones, wide-set eyes, a long nose that pointed toward the line of her mouth. Her lower lip was pierced with a ring, and she had a barbell through her left eyebrow. I had a visceral reaction when I first saw it—a slight clench, as I imagined she did when the needle went through. It gave that brow an appraising, arched appearance that was at odds with the glaze of her eyes.
    She walked with an elfin bounce that came from her knees rather than her feet and gave her a look of youthful awkwardness. But her body was a woman’s body. Her height had given her large feet and long, slender legs. She had broad hips and a soft dumpling of a belly. A long tattoo curled up her left forearm, though I was too far away to tell what it was. I knew I could pass for decent looking: I had a narrow build, small features, and brown hair the color of coffee with milk, which had been cut the same way for most of my life. But I was