Miles was in our kitchen wearing my blue-in-green bathrobe, while a humongous blackfish seethed in the deep-fryer. Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 spinning on the turntable. Images of The Outer Limits flickering like an eerie slide show upon the walls. Frances and I were perched on the windowsill, passing a stogie back and forth, watching the rain pour slantwise in the neon-colored night. I rested my hand on her sepia thigh, but it felt like touching somebody else’s sentimental photograph. She just picked up my hand and placed it in my lap again. “You’re in the wrong key, honey,” she whispered.

“I’m a key dangling from a thundercloud.”

She uncrossed her legs as if to stand but she did not. Miles’ horn issuing from the kitchen—a few Egyptian-sounding notes, middle range and legato. The cigar smoke hovering in the air like a charmed cobra. My wife, I believed, waking in our dark bedroom, lifting a damp cloth from her luminous face.