Like an argument against keeping the more unshakable varieties of woundedness inside, where such things may best belong, he opened his eyes in the dark. Did you hear that, he asked . . . I became, all over again, briefly silver, as in what the leaves mean, beneath. I could hear what sounded like waves at first, then like mistakes when, having gathered momentum, they crash wavelike against the shore of everything a life has stood for. —What, I said. …