When Eddie finds out, he calls his sister to tell her he’s sorry about the lemonade and the missed flute recital. He’s not actually sorry, but probably she needs to hear it, and probably he needs to say it. The phone rings through and he apologizes to the automated voice after the tone. He hasn’t got any kids, so he calls the doctor who opened him up to fix a heart valve four years ago.

“Why are you calling me,” the doctor says.

“To thank you for saving my life.”

The doctor hangs up. Eddie doesn’t call anyone else. Nobody calls Eddie.

That first month, Eddie stays home from work. Most people do. Clear February skies, good jogging weather. Half the world, it seems, qualifies for the New York Marathon. He takes up quilting again and quits. Works a bit on his novel and decides for good he’s not really the writing type. Out with the guitar, out with the gardening books. Prisons open on point of ethics. Crime rates down 98 percent, no need to lock the door anymore. A pair of ex-inmates take up living in his bare-beamed basement. He found them playing marbles in front of the deli. They keep their hair buzzed and have seagulls tattooed on their faces, the sort of people he would’ve normally avoided—he’s not proud about that—but they cook superb spaghetti and in exchange he gives them the television, which they watch like hypnotics in the evenings because the bars and clubs and theaters have a three-month waitlist. The pair get jobs planting apple trees.

Musicians book final tours. Eddie tells his neighbor about a concert at Madison Square, a singer he’s wanted to see since kindergarten. “She’s famous on the radio,” he says. “Tickets on me.” That’s a joke because tickets are free. His neighbor declines because He-Man’s on. “They’ve brought it all back just this once, I can’t miss it.” Eddie understands. He goes to the park to feed ducks.

Billboards along the streets advertising new health clinics. “Discrete and painless. Every customer gets a free urn.” There’s also a hotline number for bio cleanups.

By April Eddie goes back to his cubicle to sift through tax audits. Some cubicles stay empty. Lively office, new with streamers hung between cold white pillars and a mandatory half-hour break every hour. Someone brings a stereo for dancing. He doesn’t join the dancing, just sits at his desk, smiles, asks the polite things about how people are doing, how they’re feeling, what their kids are up to these days, still can’t bring himself to talk to the redhead three cubicles over. A week later her desk’s cleared out. He wonders if she’ll ever find that sticky note with his phone number he hid in a binder.

Eddie goes to the tailor who makes good work on a set of suits and a purple tie that makes the neck look trim. Eddie learns the Balthus knot, not too fancy—refined, Eddie thinks—which he practices tying each afternoon in front of his mother’s standing mirror. It’s about getting the length right. The tip of the tie should rest square in the frame of the belt buckle, the way his father always wore his tie.

A bakery in Greenville filed the wrong tax forms this year. Sweet Eats. A website with pictures of scones with smells that seem to waft off his monitor, tickling the hairs in his nostrils. There are only slow days now, so Eddie goes by in person, lets them know they’re $3,000 short. The owner gives Eddie a check and a half-dozen Holiday Special cinnamon rolls. They’re doused in gray frosting and decorated with finger-punched craters. As for the scones, there’s no more vanilla, it really is a shame, and you just can’t make the scones without vanilla. The rolls are still gluten free.

The stock market’s up but there’s no drop on housing prices. Eddie takes up walking daily in the park and finishes a book about industrialism. He calls the hotline almost once a week now. He makes a ritual out of checking the mail in the hope that all those people who didn’t call him sent a letter instead. Each day the mailbox is full of nothing but pamphlets about the best beaches to visit and how to find religion.

His manager asks if he wants a raise. Does he need more time off?

No, he’s alright, thank you anyway.

Summer comes and the news doesn’t talk about global warming. A popularity spike in intramural sports. He gives his Acura to the neighbor girl who wants to see Yosemite and Buenos Aires with her friends. Best time of year for it, go easy on the sloped roads though, the transmission gets twitchy. After his six-month checkup, the dentist tells him to keep a can of chili in his backpack for good luck. He keeps two. Pamphlets in the mail about reserving a spot in the cemetery. In his free time, Eddie sketches turtles.

He’s still waiting on a call from his sister when an old girlfriend shows up and takes him to dinner at a fine-trim restaurant where they eat boiled lobster and all the other fine meats on plates so thin they’ll shatter if he presses his fork too hard. In a decade neither have changed. They chatter about the weather and carry on the same old arguments they’d had in high school, but now the conversation feels something hollow. Still, they smile at nothing and laugh at nothing and try to refute the astronomer-turned-celebrities with hapless theories, all the while doing that awkward thing where they reach across the table to graze hands like it’s an accident and there’s a connection hidden between them. They end the night with a handshake and a compliment about her blouse, the frills. She seems lonely.

His boarders grow from two to five. They keep the television playing all night with the volume loud enough to shake the floorboards of his room, electricity bill way up. They leave splatters of tomato sauce on the counter and it’s time to start asking for rent. No complaints.

On Asteroid Day Eddie walks to the park in his suit and knotted tie, a bag of oats for the ducks in his hand. People who see him nod and he nods back. They’re on their way to work or family dinner or church or wherever else they’ll go to wait. Today’s calmer than he would’ve expected. He finds a bench, spreads oats on the pavement. The spring leaves flutter like timbales in the wind. He looks up at the sky and wonders.