wo rings: IT’S the signal Hoffstetler has been waiting on since midnight, as there was no telling how technical Mihalkov would be in defining Friday. Nevertheless, when the phone rings in early afternoon, it’s like being pounced upon by a panther. Hoffstetler’s arms and legs spring upward to protect himself, and a hysterical scream rises to the top of his throat. The first ring draws to a ludicrous length, long enough for Hoffstetler to think that it’s Mr. Fleming calling, suspicious of Hoffstetler’s failure to show up for his last day at work, or Strickland wishing to tell him that he’s figured the whole thing out.

The second ring, though, is terse, severed by the caller, and it gongs off the bare walls, empty cabinets, steel cot frame, and dishes. The last moans, he hopes, of a lonely life. He should be giddy. Instead, he is paralyzed. He can’t swallow. He has to force himself to breathe. Everything is going as planned. Every detail is in place. The loose floorboard, glued shut. His passport and cash, bulging the inside pocket of his jacket. His single suitcase, packed and impatient by the door.

He dials a taxi with memorized numbers and returns to the kitchen chair upon which he’s spent the past fourteen hours. Another fourteen hours after that, he tells himself, and he’ll be in Minsk, where he can get started on his new profession: the business of forgetting. Did the janitor get the Devonian to the river? Or had it died in her possession? In the tall white snowbanks of Minsk, he can bury such questions forever and attempt to get beyond the dismal hunch that, if a being like the Devonian can be allowed to die, then the whole of planet Earth is doomed.

A taxi honks. Hoffstetler takes a deep breath, stands, and waits for his wobbling knees to lock. The moment is heavy; it is also inevitable. Warm tears fill his eyes. I’ve kept myself out of reach of all of you, he thinks, and I’m so sorry. The students for whom he’d felt affection, the friends he’d almost had, the women who might have made him happy. Their ellipses had touched—but nothing had happened. In all of time and space, there is nothing sadder.

Hoffstetler picks up his suitcase and umbrella and steps outside. The cab awaits, a yellow smear beneath a silver scud of pouring rain. An ugly day, by all accounts, yet Hoffstetler is struck by beauty everywhere he looks. This is America: He bids his adieus. Good-bye to the green buds yawning awake from the skeletons of bony trees. Good-bye to the bright plastic children’s toys waiting in front lawns to be renewed with springtime vigor. Good-bye to the cats and dogs blinking from windows, proof of interspecies symbiosis. Good-bye to households of strong brick, cozy television light, comfortable laughter. Hoffstetler lifts his elbow to wipe the tears, but they have mixed with rain.

He’s had this cabbie before, a violation of his own rules of conduct, but it’s his final trip, what could it matter? He tells the man where to go, then peers out the window, wiping fog from the glass, unwilling to miss a single sight. American automobiles, he’ll miss them, too, their preposterous shapes, brash spirits, and gregarious pigments. Good-bye, too, to that big green Cadillac Coupe de Ville idling across the street, a gorgeous machine, even if its back end is smashed.