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scanning those flickering rows of figures, looking out for anything unusual. Behind him, a wall of glass. If he swivels his chair around to the side he’s looking right down the barrel of Seventh Avenue. Below him, the heaving traffic and the fumes and the people. At his eye level, constantly shifting billboards and neon signs. Rising up on the far side of the street, great tracts of concrete and steel and glass. And above it all, that vulnerable New York sky.
    It occurs to him now what it is that he’s been doing these past few years. He’s been sitting there, waiting for another plane to appear on the horizon, heading straight for his office building.
    And in a way it did.
     
    LATER IN THE DAY , Bruno will wander the streets looking for little bookstores but finding only big ones. He’ll sit in a café and read all the local newspapers to catch up on the election. He’ll be forced to order something he doesn’t want to fulfill the minimum charge. After that he’ll wander through a city square, standing for a while to watch preschool children in quaint little uniforms collecting autumn leaves. He’ll rest on a bench by a reedy canal, and he’ll smile at the drunks gathering on the opposite bank. And he’ll wonder to himself, what am I doing here?
    Later still, he’ll go back to the guesthouse and shower in the tiny bathroom. He’ll wander down to the village and eat supper alone in a bustling restaurant. He’ll go back home and get into bed, only to discover that he’s unable to sleep. And he’ll find himself wondering all over again, what the hell am I doing here?
    This is the day ahead of him. He can see it laid out like a path, but he’s in no hurry to embark on it. Instead, he just sits there on the bench at the edge of the strand and stares out to sea. He’s surveying his past, as if it’s a field he’s just crossed. He doesn’t want to go back, but he’s not ready to go forward either.
    He’s like a man who’s been shipwrecked. He’s been washed up on a desert island. He’s letting his clothes dry off in the air and he’s contemplating his new lease on life.
    He’s not sure yet what to do with it.

Chapter 4
    I FEAR OUR AMERICAN FRIEND is lurking.”
    From where Addie was standing in the doorway, it looked like he was just a stencil. He was a black outline against the bright light of the window.
    “What makes you think that?”
    She was squinting through half-closed eyes, still half-asleep.
    “There was a strange-looking fellow out there this morning. I got the feeling he was spying on us.”
    Addie walked over to the window. She peered out at the front drive but there was nobody there.
    “How can you be so sure it was him?”
    “There’s no doubt in my mind. The beard, the blue jeans, the general demeanor. Straight out of central casting.”
    He made a kind of clucking sound in his throat as she bent to kiss the top of his head. His hair was baby thin now, a lick of it swept over his bald patch in a lame attempt at disguise. It made her tender towards him.
    “Not much else I can do,” he was saying, “but sit here and observe. If I sit here long enough, something interesting is bound to happen. Touch of the Rear Window about it all.”
    This is his stock-in-trade, this habit of captioning every situation with a film title. He’s well-known for it, people joke about it behind his back. “Nobody mention My Left Foot ,” Addie’s sister had whispered as they stood in his hospital room on the day of the accident, watching him trying to flip the page of his hospital chart with his chin.
    “Do I get to be Grace Kelly?” Addie asked cheerfully as she bent down to scoop up his laundry from the basket beside the door.
    “You’re a dead ringer for her, my dear.”
    It had been hard on him, the accident. Hard on her too. They were united by their helplessness in the face of what had to be done.
     
    “I DON’T LIKE IT any more than you do,” she’d said, before he had a