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    motorcycle accelerate in high-pitched whine from several
    blocks away. Everything was, he insisted, as it should be.
    Not perfect, but familiar. It is a night like any other. It is
    hot. There is a breeze that cools nothing. The tropical sky
    blinks with stars.
    He insisted to himself that there was nothing unusual in the world at all except for an old woman’s memories of nightmare. But we all have those, he thought. He tried to reassure himself with the ordinariness of the world around him, but was only partly successful. He found himself peering into the shadows, looking for shapes, listening for telltale noises, behaving like a man suddenly afraid he was being watched, worried that he was being pursued. He shook his head to dislodge the sensation of dread that overcame him, chastised himself for showing the uncertainty of age and strode determinedly past the cherub in the dry fountain. He was overcome suddenly with the desire to walk, to try and put distance between him and his neighbor’s fears.
    He stepped forward quickly, wondering, for just an instant, if death, when it arrived, was like the night.

CHAPTER TWO
Sleep
    Sophie Millstein peeked around the edge of the curtain, watching Simon Winter disappear into the darkness of the courtyard. Then she turned away and slumped down into her easy chair. Almost immediately the large gray and white cat leapt into her lap.
    ‘Mr Boots, did you miss me?’
    She stroked the soft fur on the nape of the cat’s neck as it settled in.
    ‘You shouldn’t get too comfy,’ she warned. ‘I’ve still got things to do.’
    The cat, as cats will, ignored this and merely began purring.
    Sophie Millstein rested her hand on the cat’s fur and suddenly thought herself exhausted. She told herself that it would be all right for her to just shut her eyes for an instant, but when she did, she found herself enmeshed in a tangle of nervousness, as if closing her eyes reawakened fear, instead of bringing comfort. She put her hand to her forehead and wondered if she were perhaps coming down with something. She thought she felt hot, and she cleared her throat several times harshly, as if checking for telltale signs of congestion. She took a deep breath.
    ‘You’ve had an easy life, Mr Boots,’ she said to the cat. ‘Someone has always taken care of you. Warm and dry home. Plenty of food. Entertainment. Affection. Anything a cat could want.’
    She abruptly slid her hand beneath the cat and pushed him from her lap. She forced herself to rise. She looked down at the cat, which despite its abrupt
    erection, rubbed itself up against her leg.
    ‘I saved you,’ she said bitterly, surprising herself with
    her own anger. ‘That man put you and all the rest of the
    litter into that bag and was going to throw you into the
    water He didn’t want kittens. No one wanted kittens.
    There were too many kittens and everyone in the world
    hated kittens and no home would have any of you and so
    he was going to kill all of you, but I stopped him and took
    just you out of the bag. I could have chosen one of the
    others. I had my hand around one of the others, but I let
    it go because it scratched me. So it was you I grabbed, and
    so you’ve had an easy life, and all the others, they went into
    thebag and the bag went into the water and they
    drowned.’
    She pushed Mr Boots away with her foot. ‘Lucky cat,’ she hissed sharply. ‘Luckiest cat in the
    world.’
    Sophie Millstein walked into her kitchen and began to
    straighten the shelves, making certain that every label on
    every can was face forward, lined up by size, ordered by
    group, so that a tin of olives wouldn’t be next to a can of
    tomato soup. When those goods were properly placed, she
    did the same to the perishables, imposing military precision on the refrigerator. The final item she inspected was
    a founder fillet which she had earlier intended to broil for
    her own dinner, but she was no longer hungry. For a
    moment she hesitated,