When Kyle picked up Nora, he followed his usual pre-date routine: he rubbed Debenhams (Imported!) on his wrists and neck, turned his satellite radio to “BBC News,” and, the second she entered his car, told her how much he liked her “flat.”

In response, most girls giggled, excited once again by the novelty of a “British guy.” Their own, local James Bond. A modern Paul McCartney. Some of them even asked him the expected questions immediately: “Do you go back overseas often?”, “Is it true that it rains every day?”, “Are you near the Big Ben?” etc. Given how annoying he found these questions, Kyle couldn’t help but imagine how annoying they must be for actual British people.

“I really like your flat,” he said when Nora entered the car.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, adjusting her shoes. They were black ballet flats, and Kyle could see the bare tops of her feet. “My friend’s having a meltdown.” She finished and then looked through the windshield. “Where are we going?”
He smiled and looked ahead. “I can’t tell you that,” he said, his hard final “t” hovering in the air between them. “It’s top-secret.”

“Okay,” she said, slipping off her flats and curling up on the seat.

Kyle always practiced his British accent first by listening to things—usually several Beatles songs, followed by a Mary Higgins Clark novel read by a British narrator—and then by trying out various words and phrases in the bathroom mirror. He had identified the phrases that he found himself using most often early on, and quickly mastered them. These included: “How are you?”, “What did you do today?”, “Interesting”, “How’s your meal?”, and “Do you want dessert?” But while he said these flawlessly, his favorite word to use was “solipsistic.” He loved the way it sounded, how the middle “s” sounds hissed and took over the word, and because of this, he tried to use it in every possible conversation. Usually, he could do it pretty easily—he’d simply turn the conversation to the Old Testament and charge a minor prophet with solipsism.

Recently he’d been ending his practice sessions the same way—he’d go into his closet, get out Bob’s Your Uncle, and study it while sitting on his bed. He’d bought the book at a garage sale the day he moved into his apartment, along with an unmarked book of horror stories and a brown leather ottoman. The latter two had proven generally useless—the only good story in the book was missing its last page, and the ottoman was filled with ants. But Bob’s Your Uncle was not useless; Kyle read it. In fact, he got through all 473 pages (not including appendices) in just under three hours. It was the most he’d ever read in one sitting, and by the far the most exciting.

The book was about a teen-aged boy who, after learning a British accent for a school drama production, decides to keep the accent up for the rest of his life. But what Kyle liked most about the book was a glossy color chart in the back. “How to Speak with a British Accent if you are American” was written at the top, in big block letters. He’d opened to this chart so many times that the book, when laid flat, automatically opened to it, as if mechanically powered. “Pronounce T as T, not as an American D” was one bullet point. “Unless it comes at the start of a word, don’t be afraid to completely omit R” was another. “Speak confidently and use slang as much as possible” was a third. Once he felt he’d seen enough, Kyle would close the book, neatly wrap it in a white cloth, and then put it back in his closet, deep behind his hats.

Though the restaurant Kyle took his dates to was not British but Italian, it was nevertheless a very specific choice. During college, Kyle had taken dates there often, and in some stretches, very often. He knew everything about it—the layout, the wait staff, the little tricks to getting better service, and, most importantly, the menu.

“So,” he said when they were settled at a table, “what did you do today?” Classic.

“Talked to my friend,” Nora said, crunching a bread stick. “His girlfriend just told him she wanted to be ‘friends’ and nothing more. They’d been dating for three years! Anyway, he’s obviously a wreck.”

“Do you think they’ll stay apart?” Kyle made sure to leave out the “r.”

“Unclear,” she said. “She’s pretty skittish overall, so it’s hard to say. Plus, he’s moving away next week.”

Suddenly, their waiter appeared. His nametag said “Julian.”

“If it isn’t my good friend! What a pleasant surprise!” he said. Kyle had called ahead of time. “What will you two be having tonight?”

That was the cue, and at this point, the two men launched into what was entirely an act, a practiced and perfected method of ordering. First, Kyle would ask for their best bottle of red wine. Then, after his date ordered, he’d concentrate on the menu for several seconds before looking up and saying “Maybe I’m being dim, but I think I’m up for the Grilled Veal Chop tonight.” Julian, who after four years of this charade, understood exactly what Kyle was doing, would then ask, “Would you like that to be a half- or full-portion?” to which Kyle would say in perfect English, “The Full Monty! Yes please!”

Without fail, this mini-performance had been working for Kyle as a kind of aphrodisiac. Up to this point, all of Kyle’s dates had swooned after that last line. In fact, Melanie, one of his first dates, had been so taken by the exchange that she began blushing and didn’t stop for the entire meal.

But Nora was different—she didn’t smile. Her eyes were on the menu. She’d missed everything.

Within minutes Julian brought out the bottle of wine. The label featured golden leaves entwined with words written in a thin cursive: “Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Grands-Echezeaux 2004.” What was actually inside was a simple Candoni Merlot, a twelve-dollar wine.

“I could pour you a taste,” Julian said, already filling Kyle’s glass. Kyle took a sip, paused, and then suddenly smiled at Julian.

“Smashing,” he said, making sure to pronounce the final “g.”

Part of the reason why Kyle kept the accent up was the immense success he’d encountered early on. A month after he started using it—also, a month into his freshman year of college—he’d lost his virginity. To Kyle, who couldn’t even talk to girls in high school, let alone date them, this outcome was clearly causal, so he kept the accent up, and cultivated it, until it was quite good. So good, in fact, that often the first question people around him asked was where in England he was from. “South of Parth,” he’d always say, confident that no one could call him on a made up town.

Kyle and Nora spent most of the meal discussing their respective college experiences. They had both majored in psychology, but hadn’t met until a mutual friend introduced them at a graduation party. Kyle was attracted to Nora immediately, though he wasn’t completely sure why. Maybe it was her brown bangs or the way she keeled over in silent laughter after he told a good joke. Maybe it was just the novelty of a new, pretty girl in his life. He wasn’t sure.

As was his custom, right before dessert, Kyle steered the conversation to sports—specifically, European football. This was a topic he’d become pretty familiar with over the past two years. Mostly, it had happened through simple osmosis: Kyle’s two best friends—also his two largest friends—were huge fans of Manchester United. Often on weekends, they’d go to a bar, get drunk, and watch the game, and they sometimes brought Kyle along. As a result of these trips, he now knew all the rules, teams, and players. He knew which players were the fastest, which ones could kick the ball the farthest, and which ones, according to popular magazine articles, vigorously masturbated in the locker room minutes before every game. Recently, and to his own surprise, he’d started referencing players and game moments in his own daily interactions at work. He didn’t feel bad about this, since his older co-workers usually seemed excited to hear about something novel. But on dates it wasn’t the same. For some reason, whenever he brought up European football, he thought about playing “UNO” with his little sister, and how she’d always save a “Wild Card” until the very end.

“I’ve always been a Manchester United fan, myself,” he said, wiping his chin with his napkin. “Do you follow football?” In response, he expected the usual: “Do you mean soccer? Because here we use the term ‘football’ to refer to another sport,” etc., etc.

“Where in England are you from?” Nora said. “You have an interesting accent.”

Kyle froze. He looked at her, then at the people at the table behind her. He was about to say “South of Parth,” but at the last minute decided to try to buy to some more time. “What do you mean?”

“Well, my friend Paul, for example. He obviously has a British accent because he’s from there. But it’s actually noticeably different from the accents of other English people I know.” She looked at him and smiled. “And yours I’ve never heard before.”

On the outside, Kyle appeared calm. His natural demeanor was a kind of scowl anyway, so even when he was stressed his face didn’t tell very much. But inside, he was anxious. “A bit off my trolley” is what he would’ve said, had she asked him if he was okay. Did she know he wasn’t British? Had she just been playing along the whole time? How many English people did she know?

Suddenly, Julian emerged from the kitchen, carrying two large slices of key lime pie. As he moved, he apparently caught his foot on something and fell to the ground, the two slices neatly crashing down on top of him. This was the final act. Julian had come up with it the previous month, during Kyle’s first date with Brenda. As he explained to Kyle afterward, when you’re with someone, you can talk about three things: your life, her life, or what’s happening around you. The best conversations, he explained, always drew from the third.

“I’m okay! I’m okay!” he shouted, wiping whipped cream from his face and hair. “Just a slip!”

“Wow,” Nora said.

“Wow is right,” Kyle said. “I feel like I’m watching an early Monty Python skit.”

They talked about movies while they ate dessert. While talking, Kyle noticed writing on Nora’s left hand.

“Did you run out of paper?” he said, pointing.

She smiled. “No, but I write on my hand when I really need to remember something.”

He gently turned her hand and leaned in, so he could read the writing. The letters had a jagged, unpredictable look to them, as if she’d been on a bumpy car ride while writing. The e’s, particularly, stood out—the bottoms of them curled up sharply, more like v’s than u’s.

Kyle looked confused. “Remember to roast porks?”

She bent forward and laughed silently. “Remember to return books. I took some books out from the library and don’t want to get late fees.”

Kyle wondered what library she belonged to, if it was the same as his, but decided to save that discussion for a future meeting. He drove her home and walked her to her door.

“I’ll ring you this week,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, and laughed.

Most mornings Kyle went for a five-mile run before breakfast. On days when he slept through it, he lifted weights after work. Rarely, but occasionally, he was too busy to do either. On these days, he would do three sets of fifty push-ups before bed.

But on the Monday and Tuesday after his date with Nora, he did nothing. He couldn’t focus. He ate hardly anything—a couple slices of toast for breakfast, some cereal for dinner. At work, he struggled with simple tasks, and proofreading a basic client report took him all of Tuesday afternoon.

The one thing he could focus on—really, the only thing—was Nora. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. This was a new development for Kyle; most girls dropped out of his mind quickly and easily. Even Belle, whom he’d really liked and possibly even loved, became an afterthought when his mom surprised him with a refurbished Playstation 3.

Kyle still wasn’t sure what he liked so much about Nora. She was pretty, no doubt about that. Very pretty. What eyes! Those dark, dark eyes. And her hair. Boy, she had great hair—thick and brown and sweet-smelling, like she had just shampooed. But that wasn’t the only thing, was it? Her looks? He wasn’t one of those guys, was he? He hoped not, but, to be completely honest, he wasn’t sure.

Whatever.

He wanted to see her more.

One of Nora’s phrases stuck in Kyle’s mind more than any other: “You have an interesting accent.” He kept playing it back. Interesting. She had said it in the smoothest way possible, as if the whole word were one prolonged syllable. Did she buy it? Or did she know enough about English accents to know that it was all a sham? Kyle knew from his studies that there were, indeed, many different kinds of English accents: from Queen’s English to London Cockney to Estuary English to Kettering to Scouse and so on.

He waited until Wednesday night to call her. Before calling, he got out a bottle of whiskey and took two shots to calm his nerves. Then he took two more and dialed.

“Cheers,” he said when she picked up. “This is Kyle. I was wondering if…well, first: how are you?”

“Great. You?”

“Excellent.” He was gaining confidence. “A bit zonked from work, but doing well.”

“That’s great,” she said. “Still got that British accent I hear.”

He choked briefly before pressing on. “I was wondering if you might be up for another dinner later this week…perhaps Friday?”

She paused. Through the receiver, he heard what sounded like a Beatles song in the background. He pictured her black flats. “I can do Friday.”

“Great,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“Actually, can I pick you up?” she said. “I’d like to see your place. You know, to make sure there are no bodies.”

“Really?” He didn’t know what to think. He hadn’t been expecting this. He decided to play it cool. “I mean, sure. If you really want to.”

“I really do.”

“Okay. That works. I’ll make sure to hide the bodies.”

“Smashing,” she said, and hung up.

Immediately after the call, Kyle’s mind went into overdrive. Why did she want to see his place? That was a weird thing to ask. Isn’t that a question you ask after dinner? Did she think he was hiding something?

He looked around his apartment. He’d have some cleaning up to do, that was for sure. There were socks everywhere. A pair of red-striped underpants hung from the ceiling fan. His Green Bay Packers trashcan was overflowing with microwavable pizza boxes. He had yet to see any mice, but he often saw lines of black ants vibrating along his walls, quietly slipping underneath his posters.

He had two posters. One was a copy of an Edward Hopper painting that he’d bought at a garage sale a year ago. He didn’t know the official name of it, but it showed a lone man at a gas station in the country. The other poster featured Jimi Hendrix smoking while playing guitar. According to the caption, the photo was taken right before he went on stage to play the Star Spangled Banner.

Reading this again, Kyle finally realized the root of all of his fear, why he was so worried about Nora coming over: his apartment was too American. It exuded Americanism. None of his things were things an actual British person would own. The posters, the Coca-Cola coin holder, the Paul Newman lemonade in his refrigerator—all of it, he decided, had to go.

So, for the next forty-eight hours, Kyle gave his apartment a makeover. A “British invasion” is what he called it. He threw out all of his American food. He shredded his Ford Explorer warranty and his old TV Guides. The posters came down and went under his bed. In their place, he put up a huge Union Jack that he bought at flea market in Seattle. From the mall he got two soccer jerseys—one Liverpool, the other Tottenham Hotspur—as well as a glossy photo of the House of Commons, all of which he hung over his desk.

He bought three new umbrellas and put them in the corners, in front of the ants. He bought the Fawlty Towers TV series and carefully placed the DVDs and their cases around the couch. During his lunch break on Friday, he went to the library and took out the following books: Churchill: A Life, The Love Poems of Lord Byron, Famous Historical Maps II: The Norman Conquest, and Underwater Guts: How I Swam the English Channel.

Kyle’s car got a flat on the way home from work. He changed it successfully, but by the time he got home, he had just twenty minutes before Nora was scheduled to arrive. As a result, he had to rush through his routine. He listened to one Beatles song and just five minutes of Mary Higgins Clark’s Lucky Day. He practiced a couple of phrases in the bathroom mirror. Then he got out Bob’s Your Uncle.

He was reviewing the chart when he suddenly heard a rapid knocking on his door.

“Help!” a voice cried. “Dear God, open up!”

Kyle tip-toed to the door. He was pretty sure it was Nora trying to prank him, but the abruptness of the screaming had made him overly alert. He looked through the peephole but couldn’t see anything.

“Please!” the voice said, before becoming a desperate whisper. “Please.”

“Nora?” Kyle said. “Is that you?”

“Nora?” the voice said. “Who the fuck is ‘Nora’? Jesus Christ, open up! I’m bleeding.”

Kyle opened the door. Standing before him, with a huge, toothy grin on her face, was Nora. She was not bleeding but was wearing a stunning red blouse. She looked right at him and blinked several times, in a cartoonish sort of way. Her eyes looked very big today.

“I was just trying to flirt with you,” she said, before stepping past Kyle. “Wow, what a room.”

While he made drinks, she walked around his three rooms, occasionally calling out questions.

“What’s Fawtly Towers?” she said.

“Oh, it’s just this BBC show I used to watch.”

“Who’s this guy above your desk?”

“Why, the great Bard!” Kyle called out, smiling and pouring their drinks. “Ever heard of Shakespeare?”

“Yes, many times” she said, before retrieving her drink and downing it in three gulps. “Let’s get going now.”

“Wow, that impressed, huh?”

She looked at him and smiled. “I’m very hungry.”

For dinner they went to Ed’s Diner. Kyle had wanted to go to a new seafood place by the bay, but it was closed, and anyway, Nora was allergic to shellfish. So, at Nora’s suggestion, they went to Ed’s.

Ed’s was famous for almost going out of business every spring. Usually around February, the newspaper articles started coming out. Each week for several weeks, Ed would be quoted in papers saying things like “It’s obviously a tough situation, but it’s been a great run” and “We may be closing, but we’ll never forget our loyal patrons…thanks!” By May, the diner’s windows would be covered with signs reading “Come 4 a final meal!” Sometimes, late at night, Ed’s wife Glenda could be seen sitting alone at the countertop, crying.

But then, usually during the first week of June, the signs would come down. The articles would stop. And the restaurant wouldn’t close—it would simply stay open as if nothing had happened. Waiters who had already started at other jobs would come back. Glenda would never work late. When people asked Ed what was going on, he’d knock on the nearest piece of wood and simply say, “Business is good, business is good.” The place was never crowded.

The hostess seated Kyle and Nora at the table next to the kitchen. Whenever the doors swung open, Kyle felt steam on his back and Nora could see the chefs cooking.

“So,” Nora said, closing her phone. “You’re not going to believe this, but I think my friend Paul might be bringing a date to this same restaurant tonight.”

Kyle studied her face, looking for a sign that she was joking or plotting. But he saw nothing. She was just smiling.

“He’s single again—maybe I said that already. He’s trying to get back into dating. Anyway, just warning you.”

Warning him? Kyle pretended to look down at his menu but couldn’t get his mind off of Paul. Paul was from England. He was almost certainly going to know Kyle was a fake. Had Nora planned this all along? Pretending to be British around naïve Americans was one thing; convincing actual British people would be near impossible.

The waiter came and took their orders. Nora forgot about Paul and moved the conversation to books. Kyle was thankful for the shift, even though he knew hardly anything about literary criticism. In college he’d joined a book club but accidentally slept through all the meetings.

“My favorite books are ones where the author doesn’t throw all that bullshit at you,” Nora said. “You know what I’m talking about? Like philosophical shit.”

“Right, right,” Kyle said.

“Like all those existentialist books I had to read for school. Pure, unadulterated bullshit. I mean, there’s this one guy, I can’t remember his name, whose main point of all his books is that what he’s writing is meaningless. He spends chapters and chapters making this point, that it all means nothing.”

“Were they long books?”

“They were really long! Can you imagine? This guy was getting up every day and working on this thing that he knew was ultimately worthless.”

“Wow.”

Kyle studied Nora’s face. He still wasn’t sure how smart she actually was.

Suddenly a tall man in a navy-striped sweater appeared behind Nora and gently placed his hand on her shoulder.

“Pardon me for barging in,” the man said in a flawless English accent. It sounded very natural. “Just wanted to say hello.”

“Paul!” Nora said, putting down a piece of bread. “What a treat. This is Kyle.”

They shook hands.

“Are—are you alone?” Nora said.

“No no,” Paul said, then laughed. “At least, not yet. She’s supposed to meet me here. I guess I’m a little early.”

The three of them—Kyle and Nora sitting, Paul standing—chatted for a few minutes. No one mentioned England. Then Paul’s date appeared and they went off to a table across the room.

Kyle and Nora got their food and ate slowly. They talked about their favorite bands and weird concerts they’d been to, and on several occasions Nora lost her breath laughing. One time this happened just after she took a drink and it almost came out of her nose.

Nora liked him—Kyle could tell. He’d been blessed with few strengths when it came to girls, but one thing he knew was when they actually liked him. The way he found out was, he would lean in and say something very soft and sweet to a girl, and then immediately fake-sneeze in her face. If she smiled—or better yet, laughed—he knew she liked him. If she became annoyed, he’d sigh and sadly accept the truth.

Kyle had learned the method from his uncle Dan. According to him, the suddenness of the sneeze within a previously intimate environment activates certain cells in the girl’s hippocampus. As a result, he said, her reaction has to be completely honest.

“That’s how I knew Ann was the one,” he’d say when his wife was in the room.

“He sneezed in my face,” Ann would say back.

When Kyle sneezed in Nora’s face—it was a loud, wet one—she instantly turned her head away. But it wasn’t because she was upset—she was laughing too hard. She couldn’t catch her breath. She didn’t fall out of her chair, but Kyle could see that half of her butt had slipped off. At this point, Kyle knew he had her. Whatever she knew about it him at this moment, she liked. The only question left was: did he like her?

He smiled.

He did.

So, then: it was his job not to lose her.

At various points during the meal, Kyle noticed Paul glancing over his shoulder at their table.

“I really liked your apartment,” Nora said after their food was cleared. “It’s got really good feng shui.”

“Hey, thanks for noticing! I made sure to set it up using a Chinese compass.”

Suddenly, Paul and his date appeared tableside.

“And how were your meals?” he said, flawlessly omitting all the r’s.

“Mutt’s nuts!” Kyle said with maybe too much energy. “And yours?”

“Pardon me, I’ve been rude. This is Charlotte.”

Charlotte stepped forward and shook Kyle’s hand. She apparently already knew Nora.

“Mind if we sit for bit?” Paul said, bringing over chairs.

They sat down—Charlotte next to Nora, Paul next to Kyle. The empty table now seemed comically undersized.

Paul was heading back to England in the morning. For this reason, he explained, he was attempting to get “sloshed” tonight. “They don’t serve Sam Adams in London,” he kept saying.

Kyle kept looking over at Nora, but she was talking quietly with Charlotte.

“Don’t mean to be nosey,” Paul said abruptly turning to Kyle, “but I couldn’t help but notice your accent. You’re from England I take it?”

Paul’s face reminded Kyle of a character in a computer game he and his friends used to play. The game was called TortureWorld 3D. In the game, you played the role of a torturer and simply had to torture your victim. There was no back story. To accomplish this goal, you had to choose one of the following: a samurai sword, a heart extractor, an aluminum baseball bat, or a belt. Those were the only options. After you made your selection, the game went to a “Loading…” screen for several minutes and then finally reported what happened. The victim always died.

“Yes,” Paul said. He was almost whispering.

“Whereabouts?”

Kyle had anticipated this question and thus prepared an answer, which, unlike his previous one, involved a real place. He just had to say what he’d rehearsed and he’d be all set.

But he could hardly speak.

“Roxton,” he finally got out. “In East Bedfordshire.”

“Oh my God,” Paul said, bolting up, his voice now high and shining. “What an incredible coincidence. That’s where I grew up!”

Kyle’s eye darted back to Nora, who was listening to Charlotte say something. He knew that if his own conversation went any further, that if he said, “Yeah, Roxton, let’s talk about it,” that Paul would very quickly figure out the truth. And he knew that if Paul knew the truth, Nora would know it. And that would be the end of things.

Kyle pictured Julian interrogating him the next time he went to Puzzioli’s.

“What happened to the girl?”

“Nothing. We’re just friends.”

“Something happened. You liked her.”

“Nothing happened.”

“You fucked it up, didn’t you?”

“Listen, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“She was really hot!”

“She wasn’t that hot.”
“Good luck finding another one like that.”

So, Kyle did the one thing he’d hoped he would never have to do: he gave the signal for the emergency plan. Kyle had invented the emergency plan right after he’d decided to start using the accent in the first place. The plan, Kyle knew, would almost definitely save him, but he’d never considered the possibility of actually having to carry it out. In fact, he and his friends often joked about how crazy it would be if he ever did give the cue. “That would be insane,” his friend Steve would always say. “That would be fucking insane.”

Kyle excused himself, made a phone call outside, then waited in the bathroom for five minutes. Just as he was coming back to the table, two men—both very large—burst into the restaurant, pointing and screaming at him.

“That’s the bloke!” the bald one said in a hoarse English accent. “That’s the one!”

Kyle visibly tensed up and put a confused expression on his face. It was the same face his dad made whenever he looked at the burnt eggs he’d just scrambled. “Me?” he said to the huge men. “Are you referring to me?”

“ ‘Are you referring to me?’ Unbelievable. Give us our bloody money.” The one with hair yanked Kyle out of his seat so that he fell on the tiled floor. Then the bald one kicked him in the ribs. The kick didn’t look that bad, and actually sounded like it didn’t connect at all. But Kyle instantly clutched his ribs and grunted in pain.

During all of this, Nora and Paul just sat and watched in horror. They were frozen—everyone was. Even the waitstaff didn’t move. The two men were so perfectly burly and had entered with so much bravado that people in the restaurant felt more as though they were watching a movie than witnessing actual events. One woman whispered “Bruce Willis” and snapped a picture.

The bald one kept kicking Kyle, over and over again. Each time, Kyle would react by covering his face and drawing into an even tighter fetal position. “Beastly!” he’d cry out. “You’re beastly!”

“We’re beastly? You must be bladdered!” The bald one momentarily stopped kicking Kyle. He tilted his head slightly upward—away from Kyle—so that everyone in the restaurant could hear him. “You’re the one who put it all on Devonshire Abbey ten years ago!” He paused and briefly squinted his eyes. “Don’t you remember? The West Cheshire Football Championship? Of course you do. How could you not? You bet on it every year!” He paused again and squinted. This time, he did it for a while. After about ten seconds, he nodded at his partner, who then began speaking. “Listen you little shite, just give us our money and we’ll be gone. Simple as that. Otherwise, we’ll have to keep this up.” Now he paused and looked at the bald one, who shook his head and looked back. The one with the hair continued: “Oh, and one more thing: I was in Roxton last weekend and talked to a man who recently bonked your old mum. Says she’s quite a handful in the sack!”

At that, Kyle shot up with newfound energy and charged at the one with hair. But before he could lay a hand on him, the bald one stepped him in and delivered a perfect uppercut to Kyle, who instantly fell flat on his back, knocked out cold.

The bald man bowed his head and sighed. “Back to England, I guess.” The two exited the diner as police and ambulance sirens started coming closer.

When Kyle finally opened his eyes, he desperately had to go to the bathroom. He was lying in a stiff hospital bed and even though the room’s shades were drawn, he could tell it was already late morning. He went to the bathroom. On his way back, he bumped into a nurse.

“Excuse me,” he said in his normal, American accent.

The nurse smiled. “Sir, I actually have a message for you. From your wife. Or the brown-haired woman…is that your wife?”

“No, not my wife. Where is she?” Kyle knew exactly where she was because he’d heard her talking to the nurse earlier.

“Not here. Well, she stayed until eight but then said she had to drive someone to the airport. She wants you to call her as soon as you’re awake. Which I guess you are now.”

Kyle nodded and waited until the nurse was gone and closed the door to his room. He cleared his throat. This was it—the last installment of the emergency plan. It didn’t depend on anyone else, and, to his pleasant surprise, he didn’t even need to talk to anyone face-to-face. He just had to make one call.

The call went to Nora’s voicemail. For a brief moment, Kyle considered hanging up and trying again later, but then decided against it. He would leave a message. That way, he wouldn’t have to react to anything unexpected. He was sticking to the plan.

After the beep, he took a deep breath. Then he began, speaking in his natural American accent:

“Hi Nora, it’s Kyle. First of all, thanks so much for coming to the hospital with me and staying so long. The nurse told me everything. Second, you probably realize my voice is different. I just realized this myself, and I’m not going to lie: it’s pretty shocking.” He paused and, for a split-second, remembered a magazine article he’d read about how rarely the Green Bay Packers practiced their trick plays. “Basically, what the doctors here tell me, is that last night, when I got knocked out, my brain was damaged. Specifically, my medial temporal lobes and hippocampus. Anyway, according to them, the result is that I now have a rare form of ‘post-traumatic amnesia.’ Parts of my past I can’t remember. One thing is, my linguistic retention has been damaged. The doctors aren’t sure how long it will last—a day, a week, forever—but at least right now, I no longer have my British accent. Also, I definitely remember ‘being British,’ but I can’t remember anything about my past, not even where I used to live or who my parents are.” He paused. He was close. “I bet this is pretty confusing or startling. To tell you the truth, I can’t really believe it myself. I’m still in shock. Anyway, they’re letting me out soon, so I’ll be at home for the rest of the day. Maybe we can talk later. Okay. Goodbye.”

And that was it. Now he just had to wait. He hated waiting, but he was happy to be done. He had run the plan to perfection.

When he got back to his apartment, he ate a sandwich and watched television.  Then he fell asleep on the couch. Late in the afternoon, he woke up. It was still quite light out. He went through his bedroom to the bathroom, and when he came out—he saw it.

Bob’s Your Uncle was lying on the other side of his bed. He’d forgotten to put it away the previous night. It was open, as usual, to the chart, but something about it looked different. It looked like there were marks on it. He walked around his bed, carefully side-stepping a stack of library books and the corner of a poster.

On the chart was writing. It was done in pen, but was so faint that Kyle had to pick up the book and bring it closer to his eyes and squint to see it. Part of one of the bullet points—“Speak confidently”—was underlined. In the margins next to it was written the following, in a jagged hand: “We have to work on this, buster.”

Everything was quiet, the way things tend to be two hours before dawn. Simon let his weight fall on the wooden bench with a sigh and wondered about the purple raindrops he was seeing inside his eyes. He had just spent nine hours straight killing Nazis in a dingy gamer café, and he was wishing the night bus would come soon. He hoped his mother wouldn’t be awake already.

About one and three-quarter hours before dawn, soft footsteps broke the night. Simon looked over, and then just kept looking. It was a ballerina, dressed as if she had just stepped out of Swan Lake, her white costume shining in the night and crinkling like wafers breaking as she sat down on the other end of the bench. She wiped her eyes with her hand and sniffled. Her makeup was running, but she kept her head strangely high.

One hour and forty minutes before dawn, the bus thundered in. He got on; she did not. The bus took him home.

I was eight years old when my father finally let me on his fishing boat for the first time. I remember waving goodbye to the swarthy fisherman who sat on the docks sorting nets and ropes, his wide silhouette disappearing in the folds of the low morning clouds. Soft wisps of white shrouded everything, curling around the other boats in the harbor like whispers of snakes lovingly intertwined. The whispers encircled us, too, and in the ring of white it seemed like we weren’t moving at all. My father stood solemnly on the deck with his eyes closed. I closed mine, too, and heard the muffled tickle of the ocean against the boat. Then, as the clouds began to dissipate and the world reappeared, I felt taller, lighter. Blue prairie stretched out in all directions, and above my head, the mast pierced the sky, a single steeple pointing to the sun.

My father likes this story. He always ends it by telling how he watched my expression as the fog lifted, and laughed, saying, “Juan, this is just a boat. We’re here to catch fish.” As the spray from the breaking waves sprinkled over my face, though, I imagined the icy flecks of water soaking through my skin and into my bloodstream.

Today on my father’s fishing boat, molded by his own thickly veined hands, the brush-stroke clouds and the usual mist speckling my cheeks are absent. I can’t feel them like I did nine years ago. A fish head rolls over my foot, the purple feather gills hardening. The rigging screams, and a rumbling voice summons me to throw in the nets. Fine grains of sawdust fill the tiny spaces underneath my fingernails. They pack in so tightly that my nails bend away from the skin, almost ready to snap off. I think about diving into the cold water and swimming until they all dissolve.

Soon there is a break in the schools. The water that had bulged with the masses of silver bodies darkens and empties.  My father begins to prepare more lines and nets, but I sprawl out on the deck and pull a tiny wooden figurine from my pocket. I’ve been working on her for a few days, and she really is as beautiful as I imagine she’d be running across the Serengeti.  Her legs are thinner than our thinnest rope, but the wood is strong and durable. I shape her body now, shaving thin strips of wood off layer by layer. More sawdust packs under my fingernails.

My father comes up behind me, and I quickly slip my knife and the gazelle into my pocket. His face is like granite as he summons me back to work. Hours of salt and wet rope gnaw my skin; hours of sweat and the smell of fish infuse my shirt.  When we return to the harbor, the sky behind us is dripping pink and orange. We talk with some other fishermen before heading home, and my father discusses the tides, the weather, and the movements of the fish. He walks with a slight lift in his step, only the balls of his feet touching the ground. The rest of him belongs to the sea.  I know he’ll stay excited and anxious until tomorrow, when we slither out into the white mist of curling snakes and splash, once again, into the water.

I work more on the gazelle after dinner. The swirling grains of wood are fingerprints on her flank, and I trace the subtle contours for a few moments. I finish carving sooner than I thought I would, and I place her carefully on the shelf by my bed. She is frozen, mid-leap, next to a swan, horse, eagle, and elephant.  I can almost feel the wind rushing past her.  The only grey thought that slinks into my mind as I smile back is that tomorrow I won’t have anything to focus on besides fish.

Sometime in the night, I wake suddenly.  Bewildered, I see a shadow next to my bed blocking out the moonlight. My throat convulses as the shadow turns slightly. Yellow light washes over my father’s face. I relax for a moment, but just for a moment; while the face glowing above me is his face, it’s a face I’ve never seen. He is staring at my wooden animals, unaware that I am awake, and his eyes are glistening. The corners of his mouth lift upward, and he looks like he’s listening to a faraway song, or to the memory of a song.

His thin body sways forward, his left hand reaching up, and for a moment I think he’s going to fall. I must have made a noise, because he looks straight into my open eyes. His expression is that of someone caught; I feel like I’m intruding, and not the other way around. No words come.  He turns and walks quickly out of my room.

“I know that look,” my father says the next morning. We are on the boat again, and those are the first words he has said to me..

I glance over my shoulder at him. I see my own face in thirty years’ time. He has kind brown eyes in a face eroded by the wind and sun.

“Oh, yeah?” I laugh. “It’s my I’m-going-to-catch-a-bigger-fish-than-you look.”

“Yes,” he says simply, quietly. I grip the railing tightly.

“Let’s take a break,” he suggests, pulling his lines in.

I watch him warily as he springs to his feet, more agile than any worn, stone man. I can’t connect this new man to the fisherman with whom I spend every day. He has that laughing crease near his eyes, and I wonder again what this is about.

As if I’d asked him, he nods at me, and I stare at him in amazement as he climbs over the railing and flings himself into the sky. I run to the starboard side, and he’s grinning like a boy, bobbing in the water, arms windmilling to keep him afloat. I hear two sounds, like yells, but less controlled—shorter and ecstatic. We’re both laughing. Before I know it, I’m climbing the rail too, and then flying, and then shocked from the water. The salt pricks my eyes, and I’m breathing in sharply and splashing. The current pulls at my legs, but I’m stronger, and I swim out away from the boat before circling to join my father. I can’t see the bottom, and my feet dangle in the ocean. I let out a howl. I feel the sawdust lift out from under my nails.

—Leah Schecter is a staff writer.

Emmanuel Arquito had the habit of waking up with his eyes closed.  Often he stayed that way for minutes, listening to his body, sensing its mechanisms, following blood and air.  Often, too, he imagined the things in his body that he would never be able to sense: unconscious processes that beat on for lifetimes, soft valves that opened and closed longer and tighter than plastic or steel, tiny circuits that ran complex currents through fat dense grey fluid.

He understood the circadian rhythm.  He had begun studying it, in books and in careful private experiments in his own bed, when he was in medical school nearly seven decades ago; in the years since, as a careful poet, one yet with the propensities of a doctor, he nurtured precise habits around that understanding.  This morning, upon waking, he opened his eyes immediately.

It was earlier than usual.  He glanced at the digital clock on his bedside table for confirmation, though he hardly needed it: it was five-forty in the morning.  He pulled his light blanket down off his chest and swung his feet carefully off the side of the bed to where his leather slippers waited, heels squared to the carpet.

In the dining room the old man prepared his breakfast tray.  On it he arranged a plate, a bowl, a clear glass mug, a tall drinking glass, and silverware: a fork, a knife, a teaspoon, and a serrated grapefruit spoon.  This he brought with him into the kitchen.  He put bread in to toast, placed the second half of yesterday’s grapefruit in his bowl, activated his water boiler, unwrapped a teabag, and poured a glass of orange juice.  When the bread emerged, brown, he applied butter and jam, and after pouring hot water over the teabag he took up the tray and reentered the dining room.  At the head of the table, open, lay a medical journal.  Emmanuel Arquito resumed reading precisely where he had left off a little less than a day earlier.

Despite a fastidious treatment of the grapefruit, the old man finished his breakfast well before he could finish the article.  He cleared his throat and slid his breakfast tray to the farthest end of the dining room table.  He scanned the journal for his place, in the third column of the right-hand page, but found that he could not reengage with the sentence.  This was because of the breakfast tray: Emmanuel Arquito had never been comfortable around the remnants of a meal.  The crust of his toast became loathsome once he had put down his knife and folded his napkin.  The empty grapefruit rind sagged.  The wet teabag in the clear glass mug dragged his attention like a crying child from column three page right.  Wring me out.  I am refuse.

He slid his chair back from the table.  The article would remain as yet unfinished.  He stood and assembled the tray, listening attentively for the familiar pops and groans of his waking body.  He walked slowly to the sink.  His muscles felt strong and elastic this morning, and his bones moved in quiet and painless harmony with his tendons and ligaments.  He hummed while he washed his dishes, coupling the splashes and clinks of his work with a tune he hadn’t heard since he was a child.  When he was finished, he opened a high cupboard and withdrew a canister of coffee grounds, which he converted with anticipation into the first cup of strong black coffee he had brewed in months.

Emmanuel Arquito stood by the dining room window with his steaming mug, watching the buoyant sun.  He had stopped drinking coffee when his own physician—as if he needed another set of eyes and ears beyond his own—told him that his morning cup was raising his blood pressure.  Emmanuel Arquito took this advice with an ounce of submission and a dash of bitters.

Washed and dressed, with a tentative exhilaration, the old man began his daily walk in the direction of the beach.  The walk would take him down his hill toward the sea, where he would rinse his hands and face in the cold saltwater and walk carefully, for his ankles were weak, through the deep hot sand.  Then, he would follow the paved road that led from the top of the beach up another large hill to the old royal palace, on a cliff overlooking the water.  There he would rest on a bench and feed the crusts of his breakfast toast, which he carried in a blue plastic newspaper bag folded neatly in the hip pocket of his shorts, to the palace gulls.  Their nests peppered the sheer cliff.  They rose and dropped effortlessly in the hot drafts that swelled up from the baking sand.

Rested, he would walk from the palace back down the hill toward the outdoor market on Calle de Ramón y Cajal.  From there, he would weave up Avenida de la Reina Victoria, past the t-shirt vendors and street performers, until he got to his little hill and his little house near the Plaza de las Brisas.

At the beach Emmanuel Arquito found a large piece of blue sea glass, which he slipped into the breast pocket of his linen shirt.  As he walked back up the beach from the water, over wet, firm, shifting flats, then the small humps and ridges that high tide had carved out earlier that morning, and finally the hot, white, weeded dunes that cooked in the sun, he felt a surge of energy.  He unbuttoned his shirt.  The sea glass in his breast pocket swung out into the air and then back against his chest as he climbed, ballooning his shirt and thumping against his ribs, and he inhaled deeply, sucking hot air into his dusty lungs.  He began humming again as he rose up over the final dune, and when he set his foot down on the sandy asphalt of the palace road, it was with such exuberance that his toes buckled against the front end of his canvas shoe, and he experienced a sharp and juvenile pain.

After finding an unoccupied, sunlit bench overlooking the cliff and the water below, Emmanuel Arquito extracted the newspaper bag from his pocket and withdrew a small piece of crust.  The dark brown bread was slick with cold butter.  A large gull landed on the ground in front of the bench and cocked its head to one side.  It looked at Emmanuel Arquito.  The old man held out the crust and watched the gull’s gaze follow his hand.  He dropped the chunk of bread and the gull leapt at it, gripping it first in its beak and then snapping its head back.  As it opened and closed its beak the length of crust dropped incrementally down its throat.  The gull again cocked its head at Emmanuel Arquito, and a second gull rose up from behind the cliff and landed quietly behind the first.

He reached again into the blue plastic bag and withdrew another crust, this one stained with dark red jam.  He tossed the crust over the backs of the two birds.  They leapt back, squawking, and pecked at the scrap of bread until it split apart.

Emmanuel Arquito looked down at the fingers of his left hand.  They were shiny with butter and, here and there, sticky with a film of jam, to which clung crumbs.  He put his index finger in his mouth and licked off the jam and butter.  He did the same to his thumb.

He again looked down at the gulls.  They had finished the second crust and were gazing intently at the blue bag on his lap.  Emmanuel Arquito withdrew another length of crust.  The bird heads twitched.  He stuck the crust, stained with jam, into his own mouth.

He chewed with relish the remains of his breakfast.  A third gull landed with a flutter and a thump behind the first two.  He ate a corner piece, slick and cold.  A fourth gull rose on a breeze from below the cliff’s edge.  He slowly ate a long piece of crust, sour with soaked-up grapefruit juice.  The twitching audience grew and he smiled.  He grinned in delight.  He loaded his mouth with sticky crusts. He balled up the empty newspaper bag and let out a loud whistle, sending the gulls scattering in low flight, expelling from his full mouth breadcrumbs and spittle.  He stood triumphantly from his seat, whistling, conducting the screeching gulls with his sticky wet fingers.

He whistled all the way down the hill to Calle de Ramón y Cajal.  The stalls were already set up under white canvas tents, covered in fresh fruit and fish on beds of ice.  Thick flank steaks, chucks, legs, briskets, hocks, and rolls of sausage hung from the edges of the white tents by loops of thick white twine.  Emmanuel Arquito crossed the street and passed down a small alley into the fray: children ran along the cobblestones, splitting walking couples with shouts and leaping puddles of dripped ice; teenagers in t-shirts and loosened helmets eased heavy scooters over curbstones; men with racks of sunglasses that flashed like disco balls cried out in English; round red women shouted rebukes from apartment balconies as they folded linens and listened to radio shows.  Old men plodded meaningfully through the shifting street, stooped, judicious, examining produce with withered hands and quietly singing extinct songs through sun-dried lips that opened and closed as slowly as clamshells.

Emmanuel Arquito walked with loping strides past the meat and fish tents, inhaling deeply the sanguine bouquets of the exposed flesh.  As he strode ambitiously over a wide oily puddle he thought suddenly of his bony knees, but his heel landed squarely and he paused proudly on the other side of the puddle.  Next to him, a young boy had stopped to gape.

“I’m ninety-two years old,” said Emmanuel Arquito, smiling broadly and lilting slightly forward toward the startled boy with a gymnast’s unsteady bow.  And then he walked on, smiling, as the boy expelled one quick small sneeze.

Passing through another narrow passageway at the end of the market plaza, Emmanuel Arquito emerged into a much larger stone plaza, bordered on the opposite side by the busy Avenida de la Reina Victoria.  Next to the archway were the stately granite steps of the handsome Nuestra Señora de la Anunciación church, lit in jagged diagonals by the morning sun.  A group of university students smoked on a shaded corner of the steps, twisting and miming and exhorting in fluid displays of youth.  The old man assumed a dignified posture and stepped with grace into the harsh light.

He ambled up to the group of boys.  Two sat on the steps, out of the way of the birds’ nests on the granite lip above, and the other three stood against the closed wooden doors.  They had been laughing lazily at something, and now they smiled.  He stepped up onto the first step and took a seat so that he, too, faced the plaza.

“Why doesn’t one of you give an old man a smoke,” he asked the plaza.  A cigarette appeared over his left shoulder.  He accepted it with parted fingers and placed it between his skinny lips.  He heard in his ear the click of a disposable lighter and he turned slightly to receive the flame.

He inhaled slowly at first.  He had not had a cigarette in forty years.  The hot smoke caught and he coughed, deeply and loudly, and the boys laughed.  Lazily they resumed their conversation, and now Emmanuel Arquito inhaled again, a smoker’s drag, sucking down through the tightness of his aged and contracted chest.  His thoughts broke apart into coiling red snakes and he steadied himself against the side of the church as the plaza wilted in the sun.  His heart throbbed against the inside of his thin ribcage, forcing blood down his frail arms, out between the tendons that rose up from the underside of his wrists and past the jutting knuckles of his hands into his long, dry, branchlike fingers.  The cigarette bobbed in front of his face as the blood inflated and deflated the veins and vessels that ran under his papery skin.

“I am obliged,” he intoned loudly toward the students, crescendoing slightly as he struggled to his feet.  Carefully, he descended the stairs, staggering into the sunlight and noise of the plaza.  He made a slow and imperfect beeline across the plaza, pausing for a moment to rest as the thick red snakes drifted past his eyes, fibrillating colorfully.  When he reached the other side, he sat down on an empty bench and listened carefully to the sounds of his body.  The shivering, ancient valves of his heart opened and closed, undamming rhythmically the slow, sloshing rivers in his veins.  His lungs billowed like sails into the vacuum of his contracted diaphragm.  His muscles, quietly tensed, clung to his old bones.  In his skull tiny circuits buzzed and flickered, sending small sparks outward into grey fat and across pools of dense, dark fluid.  When his headache receded Emmanuel Arquito rose and walked slowly back through the streets of the city toward his home, where his routine like a spurned lover awaited him impatiently.