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1
Early 2002.
“Are you still taking your medication on time, Mr. Balsa?”
The voice that reached me was cool, intelligent, and distant. It belonged to Ada Mesmer, my psychiatrist. I lifted my head from between my fingers. A few strands of my bangs hung messily across my eyes. Through the curtain of hair, I looked up to see Dr. Mesmer raise an eyebrow from across the desk, prompting me to answer.
“I am,” I replied hoarsely, lowering my gaze.
“Excellent.” She smiled, looking satisfied. “That will be all for today’s session, Mr. Balsa. I believe that you’ll recover very soon.”
“Alright.” I stood up and slid the cushioned chair I had been sitting on back beneath the desk.
“Oh—one more thing, Mr. Balsa.”
I had just turned toward the door when I heard her voice and stopped. “Yes?”
“Have you remembered the thing you forgot?”
I shook my head.
Dr. Mesmer let out a quiet sigh and turned to gather the scattered reports on her desk. “That’s fine. Selective forgetting is a form of self-protection by the brain,” she said, tapping the stack of papers against the tabletop to straighten them. “It means you’re not yet ready to face what you’ve forgotten. For now, all you need to do is wait, Mr. Balsa.”
I nodded politely and closed the consultation room door behind me.
Sunday mornings were reserved for two things only. Seeing my psychiatrist, and feeding pigeons in the park next to the clinic. It was winter, and clear days were rare. The sunlight was thin but sweet. I squinted slightly as I pulled my hands out from my sleeves and began crumbling bread. A few gray pigeons fluttered down around my feet, necks twisting, beaks clicking softly. Distracted, I scattered the crumbs before me, my thoughts drifting elsewhere.
It had been over two years since I lost contact with Tracy Reznik.
On December 31, 1999, she vanished—taking everything movable in the apartment that belonged to her. It wasn’t until the next morning, New Year’s Day, that her roommate Wendy Foote, their neighbor Charles Holt and I realized something was wrong.
Tracy, Wendy, Charles, and I were friends in college. After graduation, the four of us moved into the same building, two apartments facing each other on the same floor. Since that New Year’s Eve, Tracy had disappeared without a trace. We never saw her again.
On the morning of January 1, 2000, Wendy called from across the hall. I answered the call, and her voice reached me both through the receiver and through the space beyond the two doors—unusually panicked.
As Tracy’s roommate, Wendy was the first to discover that she was gone. Then it was me. I was the second to turn the doorknob to that apartment. In the minutes that followed, I confronted—at once—Tracy’s absence, her completely empty room, and a single photograph left on the small table where the landline sat: a group photo of the four of us, with Tracy carefully cut out.
The receiver I had just set down slipped from the table and hit the floor. The coiled cord dangled in the air, swaying loosely, trailing down like a red line of blood.
I had read a few pages about stress responses. The explanations varied, but the most widely accepted framework seemed to be the so-called five stages of grief.
The first stage: denial.
Inside the room where everything belonging to Tracy had vanished, I simply stood there. I slipped the apartment key I had just removed into my coat pocket and walked briskly toward her bedroom—despite the questionable propriety of an adult man entering a woman’s private space without invitation. I opened her closet. Just as Wendy had said, it was completely empty.
Next, I checked every place where she might have left behind even the faintest trace of her existence. I was calm—calm as though I were carrying out a detective’s assignment that had nothing to do with me.
Nothing left.
Though Wendy had already confirmed as much before calling me, I needed to see it myself before I could accept it. And now I knew I was entering the second stage: anger.
I stood in the living room. I knew Wendy and Charles were behind me, silent. I said nothing. I felt my bones begin to grow wildly, my heart crushed in someone’s grip, my throat filling with an unbearable blockage. I had never believed in God, and I certainly did not blame fate. There was no one I could hold responsible. Tracy had left of her own accord; I couldn’t even justify being angry.
And yet I suddenly wanted to scream. Or do something—anything. Grab one of the two people behind me and cry out loud. Call the police.
But I did none of that. I said nothing at all.
Wendy was the one who called the police. And the next memory began abruptly, inside a police station.
2
“When was the last time you saw her?”
I lifted my head. The officer’s face across the desk was impossible to make out clearly. I fixed my gaze on the narrow strip of shadow cast by the brim of his cap and forced all my attention into that small, dark shape, as if concentrating hard enough might keep me from blacking out again.
“Answer the question,” the officer said, tapping the tabletop.
I lowered my head once more. “Last night. She wished me a happy New Year before she came in.”
“Did you return to the apartment together?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing before that?”
“Dating.”
“Did she show any unusual behavior beforehand?”
I shook my head. My fingers had begun worrying at a small hole in the black vinyl of the chair beneath me. The sponge inside was soft and dry. The police station smelled of tobacco and bitter coffee mixed together, and the combination made my stomach churn. The officer in front of me looked dissatisfied, but there was nothing I could say that resembled a lead. After a few routine questions, he wrote down Tracy’s basic information—her appearance, what she had been wearing—and dismissed me from the room. Outside, Wendy and Charles were waiting; they had already endured their own round of questioning. Together, we returned to the apartment.
By the time we got back, it was already late. Tracy’s absence had given the place a funereal stillness. Wendy went back to the apartment across the hall. Charles had always been a taciturn person, and in moments like this there was even less reason to expect words from him. After a brief exchange of goodnights, we each retreated into our own rooms. We did not speak again after that.
I turned off the light much earlier than I normally would have. The curtains were left slightly ajar. Moonlight, mixed with the chaotic artificial glow of distant streetlights, spilled into the room, shaped and reshaped by the folds and gaps in the fabric. On the ceiling directly above me, a long, bright line of light began to drift slowly across the surface.
As expected, the third stage arrived before sleep did:
Bargaining.
I began to indulge in unrealistic fantasies. In ordinary people, this tendency might be considered relatively normal—after all, everyone harbors hope for impossible things from time to time. But for Luca Balsa, setting aside all practical considerations was an exceedingly rare occurrence.
I lay beneath the covers without moving, like a silkworm sealed inside its cocoon, my eyes open. I began bargaining with something that did not exist. If Tracy could come back—or, failing that, if I could at least be certain she had not abandoned us; and failing even that, if only I could know that she was safe—then I would be willing to do anything. I examined myself, compiling in my head a list titled Everything Luca Balsa Has to Offer. I imagined that someone might appear to propose a deal: I would do whatever lay within my power, and in return they would bring me news of Tracy.
Even though I knew such a thing could not possibly exist.
The greatest flaw of fantasy is that nothing within it can ever be converted into reality. But that does not render it useless. When a person’s mind is completely occupied by a single thought, there is no space left for anything else. That was precisely why, through these imaginings, I managed to construct a temporary refuge for myself. I did not feel sadness or pain—at least not at that moment.
Perhaps that is what makes fantasy so addictive. Anyway, from that night on, I began to look upon it with new eyes.
3
A violent headache snapped me back to the present. The pigeons had long since scattered, and not a single crumb of bread remained on the ground before me. The soft, pure white light of morning had faded, replaced by a brighter glare that was faintly harsh, warming my skin to the point of discomfort. The hands of my watch pointed to noon. It was time to return to the apartment and take my medicine.
I stood up from the bench I had sat for some time and stretched slightly, with my limbs numbed a little. The apartment wasn’t far from the park—only a ten- or fifteen-minute walk. Charles had gone to his internship; Wendy was still at the lab, helping out, and hadn’t returned yet. I always ate lunch alone. After a few perfunctory bites to ensure I wouldn’t starve, to death, I remained seated at the dining table, unmoving. The medicine Dr. Mesmer prescribed was primarily sedatives, to be taken fifteen minutes after a meal.
The living room lights were off. The balcony door stood open, letting natural light spill in through the glass, crossing the curtains and casting uneven patches of brightness across the floor.
Sometimes I truly wished Tracy had never appeared in my life at all—though the feeling was always followed by thoughts like "How could I think such a thing?”. When I examined it more closely, I couldn’t help admitting that meeting her might, in fact, have been the luckiest thing that had ever happened to me.
In twenty-one years of my life, I remembered only two New Year’s Eves. On December 31, 1998, Tracy, Wendy, and Charles went to toss coins into the wishing fountain at the park plaza, while I stayed behind at the Lapadura Laboratory, measuring data. On the same day in 1999, Tracy left.
“Luca?”
A knock sounded at the door. I looked up from the pile of experimental reports stacked like a small mountain on the table and went to open it. Tracy stood outside, her arms full of flower seedlings wrapped in newspaper, their slender roots still clinging to fresh, damp soil. I stepped aside to let her in, my gaze following her toward the balcony. Several unused flowerpots sat there—left behind by the landlord when we moved in, along with a few pieces of furniture.
“Emma sent over some flowers from her family’s shop,” Tracy said, crouching down to line the seedlings up neatly. She turned toward me and smiled. “It’s the New Year. You want a bit of good luck, don’t you? A few pots around the house will liven the place up.”
As she spoke, she peeled away the layers of newspaper. I crouched beside her and lowered my head to examine the plants.
“Lupines?”
“Mm.” Tracy nodded. I took the newspaper from her hands and tossed it into the trash, hearing her murmur softly, “I’m not very good with plants, though… Emma’s probably much better at this sort of thing.”
“May I have a try?” I said, half joking. She reacted as if I’d just offered salvation, promptly shoving the seedlings into my hands and looking at me with an encouraging smile. I sighed and gestured for her to pass me one of the flowerpots set a little farther away. She understood at once. Holding the pot, I attempted the transplant using the techniques my mother had taught me when I was a child.
“So this is why the balcony floor’s covered in dirt that you can’t even sweep them away?”
Charles had returned from grocery shopping. He hadn’t even put down the bags before being stunned by the mess Tracy and I had made together.
“Surprise,” Tracy said sheepishly.
I shrugged. “My bad.”
Charles seemed momentarily speechless. He shoved the grocery bags into my hands, rolled up his sleeves, and headed for the balcony. “Put the groceries in the fridge. Heat up the pizza. And call Wendy over to eat.”
“No need.”
The three of us turned toward the voice. Wendy was leaning against the doorway with her arms crossed, her usual calm expression intact—though the smile in her eyes was threatening to spill over. “I could hear you from across the hall. What on earth did you two do to make him shout like that? This is Charles we’re talking about—” She walked onto the balcony and took in the scene: dirt everywhere; Tracy with soil all over her hands; and Charles in the middle of helping a seedling settle into its pot. She looked at me as if unsure what she was seeing. I spread my hands in resignation, and under her incredulous stare, some of the dirt clinging to my fingers dropped neatly onto the floor.
Wendy rested a hand to her temple and said nothing.
Anyway, half an hour later, the four of us were seated at the dining table at last, our hands more or less clean. On the balcony, four pots of lupines stood in a neat row, their purple-red buds not yet in bloom, brimming with life—a sharp contrast to the disheveled state of two certain people at the table.
Looking at Tracy and me, both clearly wilted, Charles shook his head. “Let’s eat.”
Wendy said nothing. Her cheeks were already stuffed with reheated Margherita pizza from the takeout place.
“So,” Tracy said after swallowing a bite, turning to Charles at the other end of the table, “how did you finally get the balcony floor clean?”
“You’ve got the nerve to ask?” Charles looked like a disappointed parent.
“So why?” Tracy and I protested in unison.
“You two watered the seedlings too much,” Charles sighed. “The soil was wet when it hit the floor—stuck right to it.”
But then a sly smile spread across his face. “I wiped it up with towels. Balsa, you won’t have anything to use for your shower tonight.”
4
I raised my hands in surrender toward Charles, whose smile still lingered at the corner of his mouth, and toward the other two, who were clearly struggling not to laugh. Outside the window came a sudden crackling burst. All four of us turned to look as fireworks exploded across the sky—gold, red, green—burning into different kinds of flame before drifting down in showers of sparks. The winter night was boundless. Light seeped into it thread by thread, until even the darkness was filled to the brim.
The two girls opened the window first. Tracy glanced back at me. The night was a living thing, breathing inside her pupils, and in that instant she, too, seemed to become part of it. Fireworks were still erupting in the center of the plaza below. The multicolored darkness, mixed with cold wind, rushed into the room, flickering through the narrow spaces between strands of hair. Watching the excited profiles of the other three, I felt something swell in my chest—an emotion I couldn’t quite name. My mouth suddenly went dry. I wanted to say something, but just as suddenly it was as if I had lost the ability to speak at all.
Tracy, Charles, Wendy, and I—we had been friends for years. I found I could no longer imagine what “us” would look like with even one person missing. I had tried, in my mind, to play out scenarios in which the four of us went on to live separate lives, or moments in which one or two of us left the others behind. Without exception, every such attempt dissolved into blankness. It was as difficult—and as deeply resisted—as trying to imagine the world after one’s own death.
“Luca?”
I snapped back to myself. Tracy had tilted her head, calling my name. Charles and Wendy stood not far away, both of them looking in our direction.
“Yes?” I replied.
“We were talking about whether we should go make a wish later,” Wendy said, picking up the thread. Charles nodded and added, “There’s that wishing fountain in the middle of the plaza, right? It’s New Year’s Eve. If you toss a coin in, maybe it will bring some good luck.”
I smiled. “I don’t believe in that sort of thing.”
“Come on,” Tracy laughed, slinging an arm over my shoulder. “Great physicist Balsa—who among us isn’t a materialist?” Her short blond hair bounced as she grinned. “No one actually believes it. It’s just that on New Year’s Eve, if close friends like us don’t do something together—”
“But I really don’t think I can tonight,” I said, shaking my head apologetically and deliberately looking away, refusing to meet her eyes. “Professor Burke wants me to work late at the lab.”
Tracy looked even more disappointed than Wendy or Charles. “But it’s New Year’s Eve.”
“All right, all right, let him go,” Charles cut in. “At least Luca came back for dinner today. On any normal day he’d probably still be buried in the lab right now, losing all sense of time, you know.”
“Exactly,” Wendy agreed. “You know him, Tracy. He’s really a workaholic.”
“All right.” Tracy lowered her head. Her hair cast a heavy shadow across her face, and for a brief moment I couldn’t make out her expression. But soon she looked up again, wearing a smile full of understanding. “I get it. We’ll just toss in a coin for him when we go.”
“Thanks,” I said, a weight lifting from my chest.
I knew there would be many chances like this in the future. Once the research project was finished, a long vacation awaited the four of us. We would be able to do so many things we’d wanted to do but never had the chance for. Tracy, Wendy, Charles, and I—we still had a very long road ahead of us. No one could say what waited at the end of it. We only knew that if we couldn’t have dinner together tonight, we’d make up for it tomorrow; if we couldn’t make wishes together this year, we’d do it next year instead.
5
I pulled my unfocused gaze back and loosened a fist I hadn’t realized I was clenching. A small white pill lay in my palm, red marks pressed into the skin by my fingernails. Its surface was tacky with fine beads of sweat. White. Smooth. Granular.
I thought of insect eggs.
My heart slammed hard beneath my ribs. More sweat broke out in my palm. I imagined placing the pill into my mouth, swallowing it down with the cup of warm water in my other hand. I imagined the thin, slick white shell softening inside me, slowly breaking apart.
And then what?
Would dense clusters of living things push their way out? Tiny insects chewing outward from within, something slowly killing me. No—no, that would hurt. I didn’t want to die like that.
What came after the fourth step?
After bargaining—what was next? I remembered the answer from the book: depression. But my memory did not agree.
The day after we returned from the police station, I gathered up everything in my possession that had once belonged to Tracy. The scarf she’d given me last Christmas. A few framed prints. CDs stored in a cardboard box in the corner. I stuffed them all into a large black garbage bag meant for moving.
Then came the photographs, the manuscripts, a few scraps of notes. After glancing over them once more, I threw them into the fireplace. The smoke and ash that rose up really made me cough hard.
Good. Now all of Tracy’s things were gone. But I soon realized it wasn’t just that simple.
Some things that were “mine” also belonged to her. The small silver robot with the bald head on the telephone table—I had built it under her supervision. Lifting my wrist, I remembered that the watch I wore had once been repaired by her. And in the cupboard, a particular set of silverware, a shallow plate with blue patterns—she always used those when she came over for dinner.
Indeed, these things were mine. But unfortunately, every single one of them was tied to memories in which she had taken part.
There was no way around it. I untied the knot I had just made in the garbage bag and began adding everything in the apartment that could make me think of Tracy, even a little. By the time I was done, the bag was really heavy. I carried it with both hands and dumped it in the hallway outside the apartment.
That evening, I drove out to the outskirts of town. The enormous black garbage bag sat in the passenger seat. It seemed a snowfall had only just ended not long before. I parked in front of an unbroken stretch of snow, dragged the bag out, and dropped it into the white expanse. The cold was sharp, so I got back into the car immediately afterward.
It began to snow again.
I drove back the way I had come. In the rearview mirror, I saw that black stuff sink bleakly into its white surroundings as fine snow settled over it. It looked like a crow frozen to death.
I drove a little faster than before, hoping to get back into the city before the snowfall grew heavier. On the way back to the apartment, I stopped and bought a cheap new watch.
When Charles came home, he showed no reaction to how much emptier the apartment was. Perhaps it was because he had never been the type to comment on other people’s actions. Or perhaps he simply didn’t like to talk. I had always admired this quality in him, but at that moment my gratitude toward it was stronger than ever before.
“Emma and the others invited us to a classmate party,” he said. “Tomorrow. You going?”
We sat across from each other at dinner. I kept my head down and stabbed at the broccoli on my plate a couple of times with my fork. At his question, I looked up.
“I’ll go.”
If it wasn’t my imagination, Charles seemed to relax slightly upon hearing my answer. “All right. Wendy’s going too. We can go together.”
I nodded.
6
“Wendy! This is great!” Emma Woods stood at the entrance of the shop, waving as soon as she spotted us. “We thought you’d probably hate crowded places like this—” Her gaze swept over us. “And Luca, and Charles! Everyone’s really happy that you could come!”
She looped her arm through Wendy’s. Wendy returned a gentle, composed smile.
The café was dimly lit. Charles and I sat at a small table a little removed from the center of the crowd. Among this group of graduates, neither of us played any role in keeping the atmosphere lively. To put it more bluntly, most of the people here were little more than acquaintances to me. We had come from different majors, and after graduation we rarely saw one another. Naturally, the distance between us had grown.
“Um… are you Balsa?”
I looked up. A young woman with short black hair stood in front of the table, holding a cup of coffee. She asked cautiously. It was Margaretha Zelle, a dance major. I seemed to recall that she had once shared a dorm room with Tracy.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Oh.” Zelle’s expression immediately softened, her eyes brightening. “I was worried I might’ve mistaken you when I came over to say hello. It’s hard to recognize people if you weren’t in the same major. But since Tracy was in our dorm, I remember you.”
After that, she walked off to greet Charles, who was seated nearby. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Hearing Tracy’s name spoken by someone else still unsettled me. I took a couple of sips of coffee, my gaze drifting back toward the cluster of classmates chatting animatedly not far away.
Dinner was organized by Woods. She and the girls who gravitated around her occupied one table, while I sat with a few male classmates I had been closer to during university at another table nearby. The conversation revolved, as usual, around student days and where everyone had ended up since. The atmosphere was lively enough.
“Who’s that guy sitting next to Campbell again?”
A hushed whisper floated over from the other table. A few of us, myself included, turned toward the sound. A girl with light brown-and-white hair tugged at Zelle’s sleeve and murmured the question.
“Balsa. Luca Balsa. You don’t remember?” Zelle replied.
“It’s not that I don’t remember…” the girl muttered, glancing at me a couple of times. “He just looks familiar. It’s been too long—I was afraid of getting the name wrong.”
“He’s the guy who was always with Tracy,” Zelle said, smiling.
“Demi, you’re being too loud,” Woods cut in, pointing toward our table. “The guys can hear you.”
The girl called Demi followed her finger and met my gaze. She looked embarrassed. I waved a hand to show it was fine.
“Oh, right—Luca, where’s Tracy?” Woods asked, raising her voice across the distance between our tables. “I haven’t been able to get in touch with her.”
The room fell quiet. Her voice echoed briefly in the space.
“She had something come up,” I heard myself say. “She couldn’t make it.”
“I see… that’s a shame.” Woods looked a little disappointed, but quickly returned to her cheerful demeanor. “Though I suppose that’s pretty on brand for her. Tracy was always a notorious workaholic.”
And with that, the conversation ended. People at the table resumed chatting as before. The conversation between Woods and me seemed to cause little ripple. Only Norton Campbell, my former roommate from university, leaned over and nudged me with his elbow. He brought Tracy up again, jokingly. “You know, back when Melly and the others didn’t know you well, the way they described you to me was ‘that guy who’s always with Tracy.’ Looks like now they’re going to have to find another way to describe you.”
I said nothing. I simply lifted spoon after spoon of soup to my mouth.
7
In fact, I can no longer remember what kind of person I was before I met Tracy. Her existence became part of me—or more precisely, my existence became part of her. She no longer seemed like a person. She was an influence. An intangible, pervasive influence.
By the time the party ended, it was already late. After brief goodbyes, Wendy, Charles, and I went straight back to the apartment. Winter nights were cold. Before changing shoes in the entryway, I made sure to close the door behind me, shutting out both the noisy aftertaste of the reunion and January’s biting wind.
“Luca? Are you okay?” Charles’s concerned voice seemed to come from far away. “You don’t look good.”
I waved it off. “I’m fine. Probably just got chilled by the wind.”
“Wanna drink something hot? I was just about to make black tea.”
“Thanks,” I nodded gratefully.
Charles turned toward the kitchen. I pulled out a chair at the dining table and sat down, listening to the dull thud of cupboards opening and the clear clink of teaware.
“Luca?”
The voice stopped, followed by Charles calling my name. “What is it?” I asked.
“We’re out of tea leaves,” he said, sounding a little helpless.
“I think there are still some in the drawer by the phone table,” I said, standing up. “Wait a moment—I’ll find them for you.”
The drawer by the phone table was crammed with miscellaneous items. I tugged it open with some effort and bent down to search. Not long ago, Wendy’s mother had mailed her some tea leaves, and she’d given us two tins. They seemed to have been shoved into this drawer at the time.
Soon, two dark red tea tins came into view. I opened them to check, then set them aside, ready to bring them to Charles in the kitchen.
The drawer was still open. Beneath the tins were many small odds. I leaned closer. There was a tissue box we hadn’t used in ages, spent batteries waiting to be thrown out, and a screwdriver Charles no longer used. I nudged things aside. A few receipts clipped together and some crumpled supermarket slips appeared. And a chain—a thin chain made by bronze.
I reached for it and began pulling it out from under the pile, like drawing a snake hibernating in a cave.Then the pocket watch Tracy had given me burst into view like a home invasion.
The books say the last of the five stages of grief is “acceptance.” I don’t know when it came, or if it ever did. People say yesterday is something to be left behind, that what you’re ready to forget should never be recalled. But I’ve always felt that wasn’t quite right. Things that make perfect sense for others often turn into something else when it comes to me. That happens often.
I opened the pocket watch. Just as my memory had preserved it, a small color photograph printed with Tracy’s smiling face appeared. How could I have missed something like this when I was cleaning up? No—that wasn’t right. I had never been forgetful.
“Pocket watch?” I repeated, surprised, at the words before me. Tracy stood in the apartment doorway, arms folded, leaning against the frame. Misunderstanding the disbelief in my tone, she raised her eyebrows and made to take back the ribbon-tied box in my hands.
“Don’t like it? Then forget it.”
“No, no,” I waved quickly. “It’s really for me?”
“Mm-hmm. Take it. Your birthday’s coming up anyway.”
I opened the box and placed the watch in my palm, watching it carefully under the dim hallway light. It was small, brass-toned, with faint marks of hand polishing. Beneath the case lay an enamel dial, black hands moving steadily across it. And there, too, was the simply fastened color photo—Tracy. Her hair, not yet trimmed, hung slightly long and neat at the nape of her neck. Her raised lips were frozen in a shallow curve.
“Why put your own photo in someone else’s gift?” I closed the lid and teased her with a smile.
She seemed a little embarrassed, but still retorted confidently, “Why not?”
“Narcissist,” I chided with a smile.
“You were never going to refuse anyway, right?” she squinted slyly. “‘Me’ should count as a pretty good gift to you, shouldn’t I?”
I don’t remember how I answered her.
When I came back to myself, the pocket watch was still clenched in my hand. The bronze casing was damp with sweat, gleaming faintly under the dim light. My vision began to bleach white. A buzzing filled my ears. I braced myself against the table, barely holding myself up. In the blur, the eyes in the photograph seemed to move. I suddenly felt like vomiting.
A gift?
A gift. A gift.
She said she was a gift to me. We lived in a big city. In the economic upswing before the millennium, more than nineteen million people crowded the streets like tropical fish. In a place like this, finding someone who truly resonated with you was almost impossible. And yet, in this suffocating city—this city where countless people were born and countless people died every day—Tracy appeared.
We first met in a café two streets from campus. The second time, she appeared a few rows ahead of me at freshman orientation. The third time, in the innermost corner of a library about to close. The fourth time, she said she was looking for a suitable partner for a group lab, and I realized I hadn’t confirmed one either. So the fifth time, she appeared in the lab I often used, sitting across the table from me.
It took me less time to accept Tracy Reznik than it would have taken to accept a gift.
But she wasn’t a gift.
Even now, I haven’t found a suitable word to describe her. I never figured out what she actually brought me. Happiness? Pain? Or both. Or perhaps pain and happiness aren’t different at all, and drawing an equals sign between them is just a casual act? Like when Pandora brought the box—no one knew whether it held blessings or curses. In fact, before people understood what was exactly in the box, blessings and curses were the same thing.
I collapsed in the apartment. Charles called an ambulance.
From the next day on, I began psychotherapy.
8
From then on, I never carried a watch on me again. Soon, I stopped growing flowers, printing color photographs, or attending classmate parties. I never ordered takeout from that pizza shop again. On New Year’s Eve of 2000, I still worked late in the lab. I was like a soldier wounded in war, forced to amputate part of himself. I pulled out the lupines, but the soil in the pots became evidence of her absence. I soon stopped doing things she used to do. I began changing my speaking habits, because another woman had once taken part in shaping it. The one who was amputated was not the soldier, but the coward.
In the spring of 2002, I marked two full years of psychotherapy at Dr. Mesmer’s clinic. I still went for follow-ups every Sunday.
“Mr. Balsa.”
There was more scrutiny in Dr. Mesmer’s eyes than before. She shifted in her chair across the desk, crossing one leg over the other, folding her arms. “Have you been taking your medicine on time?”
“Yes,” I lowered my head, avoiding her gaze.
“Could you please tell the truth?”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“So that’s your answer?”
“Right.”
Dr. Mesmer shrugged noncommittally. “Your condition hasn’t improved as much as I imagined,” she said, pulling a black pen from her chest pocket and placing it on the desk, then flipping through my file. “In fact, it seems worse.”
“You’ve been having insomnia, haven’t you?”
I nodded.
“That figures. Your assessment results from two years ago are not much different from now. The unhealthy dependency, the anxiety—none of those symptoms have decreased.” As she spoke, she clicked the pen and marked several reports. “Psychological treatment does require long-term effort. But the premise is the patient’s cooperation.”
I said nothing. I thought her penetrating gaze would fall on me again. But I was wrong. She wasn’t looking at me at all.
“Remember to take your medication on time.”
I nodded.
The session ended. I still went to the park near the clinic to feed the pigeons.
Although it was already March, winter’s aftertaste hadn’t fully faded. Gray-white smog hung over the city, hazy, like being wrapped in a layer of afterbirth. I tightened my coat on the park bench, then took bread from my pocket and tore it into small pieces. Several pigeons gathered around my feet, forming a small cluster of smog, their throats emitting short cooing sounds.
I began scattering the crumbs on the ground. The pigeons hopped and fought over the larger pieces. I watched them.
“…Balsa?”
I looked up. A black-haired woman in a mink coat stood by the bench, uncertainty in her eyes. It was Margaretha Zelle. The last time we’d met was two years ago, at the class party.
“…Zelle. Long time no see.”
I stood up from the bench. She breathed into her hands and rubbed them together, then looked at me with a bright smile. “How have you been? How are Charles and Wendy? Are they doing well?”
“Pretty well.”
“Are you still neighbors?”
“Yeah.”
“Emma and the others miss you a lot.”
“…I see.” I lowered my head, looking at the gray concrete ground. “If you see them, thank them for me.”
“Mm.” Zele tucked a small strand of hair behind her ear. “What about Tracy? Are you still in a relationship”
I didn’t speak. I just kept my head lowered.
“No wonder Tracy never contacted us. So you broke up, and she didn’t want things to be awkward at parties,” Zelle said, misunderstanding my response. She patted my shoulder in consolation. “But fate is a strange thing, Balsa. You should try to let go.”
I nodded.
“I have to go,” she said, adjusting her coat collar. “Say hello to Charles and Wendy for me when you see them!”
She turned and left, her heels clicking crisply against the park ground. She was already far away, yet I still heard the sharp sounds, one after another.
A woodpecker was pecking at my brain.
I thought of the only pair of heeled shoes Tracy had taken with her. I’d seen her wear them only once—on New Year’s Eve, 1999. We’d gone out together. She’d worn the wool scarf she’d taken with her too. When we parted in the stairwell, she hugged me and wished me a happy new year.
I couldn’t breathe.
I realized I was surrounded by Tracy. I slumped back onto the bench, then quickly stood up again. The pigeons at my feet were startled by my sudden movement and scattered in panic.
Then the pigeons flew away.
And I flew away too.
I flew to a place without Tracy.
9
“…Mr. Balsa has taken psychiatric medication?”
I found myself in the police station closest to the apartment. I sat on the same worn cushion chair I had once occupied, its backrest riddled with holes. The bitter mix of coffee and tobacco made me feel sick. Charles and Wendy were talking with two officers.
“That’s right… he’s in a lot of pain,” Wendy said.
“You need to be careful. Actions of people with mental illness can be unpredictable. Fortunately, we found him just two streets away from the clinic. He doesn’t seem to have done anything extreme—for now.”
Their gaze seemed to drift toward me. I buried my face in my hands.
“Sorry, officers. We caused you trouble,” I heard Charles say.
Dr. Mesmer… what was the thing I forgot?
I couldn’t remember.
10
I remained committed to forgetting Tracy. Cleaning her away became part of my life. I would fixate on something until it formed some kind of reasonable connection to her in my mind, and then discard it.
Late December 2002. Charles and Wendy had long stopped talking about my March disappearance. We were about to enter 2003. The third New Year’s without Tracy’s presence was approaching.
“Are you going to the lab to work late again?”
I looked across the table at Wendy. Her blue eyes were full of apology. At some point, the three of us had grown incapable of sharing dinner the way we used to.
“Sorry, Luca, Charles…”
“But it’s New Year’s Eve,” I said, spearing a piece of broccoli.
The dining table was suddenly enveloped in an eerie silence. Charles lowered his gaze without speaking. Wendy, however, began to cry. I looked at them, puzzled. Neither met my eyes.
“You know, Luca?… I’m sorry, I know this sounds strange,” Charles said, taking a deep breath. “The way you talk… it reminds me a little of—”
“What?” I asked, suspicious, my face changing color.
“Never mind,” he shook his head.
“What?”
Charles sighed. “…a bit like Tracy.”
A sudden chill ran down my spine. My body felt nailed to the chair, immobile. Charles’s face blurred in the dim light. My vision faltered. I braced my forehead with my hands, barely keeping myself from collapsing onto the table. I knew this feeling—sometimes people suddenly hear themselves repeating words often spoken by someone familiar. It feels uncanny.
But this was different. Tracy Reznik—gone almost three years. I should have long shed everything that belonged to her. Yet I hadn’t. What Charles just said proved it. I was a shameful failure. I opened my mouth to argue, but even my tongue belonged to her.
“Hey, Luca, Charles,”
I snapped back to reality. Wendy across the table was sobbing. I had never seen her express such raw emotion. Her tears streamed down her cheeks and chin. My chest swelled like a fish jumping out of a tank, and I felt on the verge of tears myself.
“Yes?” Charles asked, hoarsely.
“Let’s go make wishes. The coins are in the box on the shoe cabinet.”
“Okay.”
I heard myself say this.
The square was crowded, though most people were busy in snowball fights or watching fireworks. So the three of us by the wishing fountain looked somewhat thin and fragile. Wendy tossed a coin into the pool, tears stubbornly clinging to her cheeks, almost frozen by the night’s cold. Then Charles followed. After tossing his coin, he closed his eyes and clasped his hands together. He was praying.
Then it was my turn. Strangely, I felt nothing. It was as if I were behind a glass tank, watching them.
I tossed my coin into the pool. I didn’t close my eyes. I looked at the central statue of the three Moirai sisters—goddesses of fate. Their pale, hard marble faces. The gentle curve of their closed eyelids. The faint green moss climbing the pool and the stones. I followed their spindles and scissors, the spinning wheels held in their hands. And Atropos, the last sister. She is the one who severs the thread of life when a person’s time comes.
Then I began to pray for her death.
Tracy—in some corner of the world—I maintained a fictional grave for her. I cleared away every object that might connect to her, or rather, I constructed a life entirely without her. I remained immersed in this nonexistent battle, even though my opponent may have long forgotten me. I was close to surrender. I retreated further into my own territory, lacking the courage to confront the traces of Tracy.
She was gone, yet her presence clung to me relentlessly. At this point, I thought nothing she had left could possibly end well. So I wished to hear news of her being found, or captured. More extremely, I prayed for her death. As I was doing now, I wished for her death.
If only she died. If I could not close the chain reaction her departure caused, then only she could be concluded. Once Tracy died, her “presence” would vanish from all those things. Visible and invisible alike. That existence would ebb away like the tide, and I could rightfully claim those objects as “remains”. What she left behind would be only clean grief for the deceased. I could mourn her, because the “object” needed for mourning would no longer be absent. I could speak to Dr. Mesmer about her, recounting stories of young love and heart-wrenching men—a reasonable cause for PTSD. I could seek consolation from Wendy and Charles, hearing them offer me kind words of sympathy. Given that they were also Tracy’s close friends, this might be cruel—but at least it would make sense.
Only if Tracy ceased to exist. Only if Tracy were dead.
I closed my eyes with utmost devotion.
How much in life can be measured?
As a physicist, I thought the answer was everything. Everything can be measured. Money measures objects, the law defines crimes, evaluations determine people. Physics, which Tracy and I had devoted years to, is made of numbers. Everything fixed in this world is bound in a web. Where there’s a web, there are threads. Where there are threads, people can trace them. What can be traced can be measured, thus can be controlled.
I think, before Tracy disappeared, my life was precisely such a process: endlessly building and weaving, like an industrious ant moving soil back and forth, until something emerged that could shake it all. Tracy, Tracy Reznik, the only factor I had ever encountered that could not be controlled. Now I knew. Only two things cannot be measured: love, and the desire for someone to die.
11
“You’re moving?”
I knocked on Wendy’s door, bracing the frame with my hands. Since returning from the wishing fountain yesterday, she had seemed off.
“Yes.”
Looking past Wendy into the room, everything but the large furniture had been packed into boxes. I was certain the room hadn’t been like this yesterday. I suddenly noticed the dark circles under Wendy’s eyes.
“When did this happen?”
“A long time ago.” Wendy took a deep breath, tugging at the heavy suitcase at her feet. “I told the landlord. I’m leaving today. This room will be rented out soon.”
My throat went dry. I tried to speak, but the words dissolved into a sigh. Charles had come over and stood behind me silently. I realized I might be the last of the three of us to know. He patted my shoulder. I looked at Wendy. She looked like she might cry again.
“Are you going to your parents’ place?” Charles asked.
Wendy nodded. Charles exhaled and took her suitcase. “I see the movers’ truck is downstairs. Let’s go—I’ll take you.”
“Thanks.” Wendy relaxed, then suddenly remembered something. “Luca?”
“Yes?”
“It’s cold. Keep warm. Remember your scarves.”
I nodded. The elevator reached our floor. Movers came out, carrying boxes. Wendy rubbed her hands. Charles dug keys from his pocket. They didn’t take the elevator, choosing the stairwell instead. I said nothing, waving. I saw Wendy trying to smile.
The hallway grew silent. I stood inside Wendy and Tracy’s apartment. I hadn’t been here for a long time. Strange ceiling, strange floors, strange walls. I realized nothing could trigger memories of Tracy anymore. And that made me think of her. I could barely stand. I collapsed. I felt frozen. As my knees touched the floor, something howled out of me. I didn’t make a sound, yet I heard a scream.
Why was this happening? I began to wonder. The answer quickly revealed itself in the bathroom mirror. I saw a man. Thin, shoulders uneven, slightly hunched inward. Messy brown hair. Dark green eyes. He looked hollow. His face expressed the absence of something vital in life.
In this mirror, I saw Tracy’s final remnant.
I closed my eyes. The Moirai statues in the square appeared in my mind. Clotho, who spins the threads of life. Lachesis, who decides their length and twists. I imagined the spinning wheel, the spindle, the scissors. And Atropos, last of the three, who severs a person’s thread at life’s end.
Remember? If something cannot be concluded, only the person can.
I looked at the dense, towering, blurry buildings of the city at dusk. The cold streets, the tropical fish swimming between them. Golden New Year’s fireworks. And finally, the revolver tucked deep in the desk drawer.
Just as I had done before, I would clean her away.
12
Charles Holt had just driven the car out from the apartment building. Wendy Ford sat in the passenger seat, watching him with concern, as they had just heard a dull, brief gunshot. A few seconds of silence passed, then a louder, nearer sound followed. Fireworks burst overhead—gold, red, green, falling in varied flames. The colors reflected into the car windows. They both exhaled, relief washing over them, smiles spreading.
Charles rolled down the window. The evening air, slightly cool and carrying the faint scent of gunpowder, blew in. Wind tousled their hair, smoothing the tired lines on their faces.
“Are you going to look for a new job, Wendy?” Charles asked, one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting outside the window.
“Maybe. But I’ll still miss the lab. I can come back to see you guys if I keep the job.”
“Maybe come here for dinner too?”
Wendy smiled. “As long as you don’t order takeout again.”
Charles’s expression softened. Then for a long, long time, neither spoke. The fireworks simply went on. The city was preparing to offer its people endless hope and happiness for 2003.