Aida had spent weeks in bed, in the dark, getting up periodically to get a drink of water. She felt nauseated every time she breathed. Whenever she wasn't thinking of Tyler, she thought of Tyler. Aida wanted to forget.

She missed Lee. Nothing was real now, not the streets, not the people, nothing; but Lee was there, and it was a comforting thought. She wondered why he hadn't called her, as he usually did when she didn't show up for a few days in a row. She missed the shop. She got dressed and stepped outside. It had been a while.

It was nighttime, and it was too bright. The neon signs gave her a headache. She walked to the corner of 9th and Main, but Lee's Bagels was nowhere to be found.

Had that been a dream too ?

It took her a while to recognize what used to be a familiar place. The shop front was boarded up, and a panel with "XXX" in neon letters replaced the sign Lee had despised so much. Lee's was gone, and the place had become a strip club again.

She stumbled away from the corner and wandered the streets, aimlessly, until the next morning. She went home. She looked at her mail, and there it was, in a newspaper from some unknown previous week, the tiny announcement of Lee's departure. Aida knew he had been sick, and she had been too selfish to care in the end. Lee had let illness get to him, and he was gone.

Lee was dead.

She ripped the newspaper, again and again and again, because she hated the cordial frigidness of the newspaper's disembodied voice. Died in his sleep. She wondered who had put the article there. She wondered who had known him.

Aida turned off the lights, and went back to her room.

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