Isidore said, “Could you maybe fix dinner for us? If I brought home the ingredients?” “No, I have too much to do.” The girl shook off the request effortlessly, and he noticed that, perceived it without understanding it. Now that her initial fear had diminished, something else had begun to emerge from her. Something more strange. And, he thought, deplorable. A coldness. Like, he thought, a breath from the vacuum between inhabited worlds, in fact from nowhere: it was not what she did or said but what she did not do and say.
