Chapter 19
August 10. The following day. The attic room calls for me again in the strangest method. Something questionable stirs between my temples, an instruction of sorts, and pushes me to the third floor. A nap is required, which prompts me to climb the steps to Dayton’s bedroom, step inside its warm hollow, and tour the premises yet again.
Here, I finger his remaining belongings: a pair of Unico briefs the color of the afternoon sun on a blistery, summertime day; a battered paperback copy of Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin; two pens, one blue, the other black; a West End College baseball cap that I’m quite sure he thieved from my closet in the foyer; not that I mind, of course, believing what is mine can easily become his.
I strip down to nothing more than my boxer-briefs, lie on D
