“I don’t sleep very well sometimes,” I tell Emil.
“I can see why,” he says. “Why couldn’t they give you the guest bedroom?”
“Because it has termites. And then where would the guests stay?”
“True. But at least Tita Connie could have packed all these things away.”
“I don’t think she wants to.”
“Yes.” I imagine Emil nodding.
Ric’s photo albums, records and books are stacked neatly on a bookshelf next to the door. Tubes holding his architectural projects still lean against the shelf with his name printed in the neat writing he learned. This bed is worked into the contours of his arms, his hips, his toes. Sometimes I get the sense I’m living in the room of someone else named Ric and I feel a strange double vision, a vertigo. Emil doesn’t sense all of this. He doesn’t know what Ric meant t
