Something changed in the air. Henry said that after the crows on the branches had stirred after Bunny's fall, his life made sense. A taste of permissiveness, as if all paths at once became open and available to him in their splendid beauty. Of course, he was the only one who thought so; the rest of us were slowly walking down the road of destructiveness, stumbling and falling ever lower towards the recently lost friend. You probably did too. Each became a reflection of what Bunny had predicted—funny, but he remained living in people's memories.

The hotel bedding was clean—registered under false names, you lurked among ashtrays and meals filled with sophistication and luxury. But something else had changed, and the air was beginning to fill with a sense of predictable tragedy; step by step you were approaching what could not yet be called, only feared.

Henry, for his part, existed in his beautiful indifference of a marble statue. Unless you counted the sudden calm and attention he began to give you behind closed doors that neither the twins, nor Frances, nor Richard could penetrate. Words were filled with intimacy even in short phone calls with the group: "She's asleep. I don't want to wake her up.". Henry offered an escape, long-awaited and welcome—in the whiteness of the sheets, in the light beams of light through the curtains, and the quiet turning of pages. But when does the storm come? The storm comes after a lull, and in anticipation of it, we tremble.

Henry was sitting at the table when you woke up. Smoke swirled around him, his fingers tapping quietly on the wooden surface of the table; when he heard a rustle, he turned his head. His eyes, still passive to both heat and cold, blue and scalding in their icy beauty, caught the flutter of your lashes.

"Morning," he greeted, turning again to the books scattered across the table. "Should I order some coffee in the room?"

The silence crackled like burning logs in a fireplace.

"Richard called this morning," he continued thoughtfully.