JULIAN

I called Nate at midnight.

I want to be precise about this, midnight, which was the specific and particular time of a man who had been in the kitchen for two hours with a woman who told him about roses and honest light and a mother named Sophia, who had then sat alone at the kitchen counter on her side for twenty-three minutes after she went to bed, who had then gone to his study and had opened his laptop and had looked at it without seeing it for another twelve minutes before he picked up his phone.

Midnight.

Nate answered on the third ring.

Not the second ring,...