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Sadie didn’t drive straight home after meeting Pigott at Itzie’s now vacant apartment. Instead, she drove to Ault Park, where she ambled around the gardens and beneath the weeping cherry trees until sundown, alone, wondering why she hadn’t checked in on Itzie sooner herself, and knowing it was because of that chair, the N?lmyna.

She’d only spent a few seconds in the N?lmyna, but the weight of having known everything, for even that fraction of a moment, lingered. It felt like she’d swallowed something radioactive.

And she’d only sat down in the N?lmyna for an instant. Itzie’d been in that all-place for days. It was inconceivably awful.

Once the sun was below the horizon—good old sun, still traversing the sky as it always had and would—Sadie drove home. Her house was at the end of a block that dead-ended into a trashy little nature preserve choked with invasive buckthorn and hogweed.

She was far from shocked to unlock the door of her little brick bungalow and find the N?lmyna already waiting in her entryway, squared up under the coat hooks, the sorta chair you sit in to pull on your galoshes.

After all, Itzie had written her a receipt.

* * *

Officer Pigott was on Sadie’s porch the next morning. She was about to leave for work, coffee mug in one hand, car keys in the other. The cop began to speak, but then he saw the chair in her entryway. His face hardened. He rested his hand on the butt of the Taser at his hip.

“Please step aside, Ms. Espinoza. I’m coming inside.”

Sadie opened her mouth, but Pigott gave her no chance to speak. “You’re being detained. That chair was removed from an active crime scene.”

“You can take it,”

she stammered, knowing that was impossible, knowing he didn’t know that. “I don’t even—”

“Please slowly set down your coffee and keys. Keep your hands where I can see.”

Pigott stepped in. Sadie backed away, stopping just past the entryway.

“I haven’t done anything—”

“Yesterday, when I called to ask you about Mr.

Espinoza-Dorfmann, you said you knew him, past tense.

I hadn’t even told you there was concern he’d gone missing.

But you already knew he was long gone.

I have no clue what anyone is up to here, but we passed into probable cause territory a while ago.

We’ll figure it out at the station.

Please turn around.”

Sadie did as she was told, presenting her wrists for cuffing, knowing that as soon as those cuffs went on, it was unlikely she’d walk free anytime soon: a man who’d practically ruined her life had gone missing and she’d been acting suspicious as hell, including appearing to have stolen a seemingly worthless chair from his sealed apartment.

Pigott took hold of Sadie’s left hand to cuff her.

She let her knees buckle, collapsing back into Pigott, dumping them both into the N?lmyna.

As soon as they landed, Sadie immediately rolled off, terrified of passing through the thin place in the chair again.

She glanced back, expecting to see an empty chair.

Instead she saw what passing through the N?lmyna entailed, something she’d dwell on for a long time to come.

The cop in the chair appeared to be frozen in time, and yet also dissolving: skull peeked through eye peered through eyelid; chair back was visible through ribcage seen through shirt and Kevlar vest gone gauzy.

The best she’d ultimately come up with to describe it was “digestion,”

in some awful way distinct from “decomposition.”

In an instant the process was complete and nothing remained—not a tooth or nail or bullet or thread. It was as though the cop had never existed. All that remained was her stunned realization that she’d killed him.

Sadie looked outside. The empty cop car was idling across the street from her place, pulled off onto the grass, blocking the trailhead. She didn’t know what to do, so she went to work.

The cop car was gone when she got home, but there was a detective in a dark sedan in her driveway. He had questions. Sadie was cooperative, but was afraid she couldn’t help:

Yes, she’d seen the cop car when she left for work.

No, she hadn’t seen any officer. She’d assumed he was on the trails; kids got up to creepy shit back there.

Yes, she’d spoken to Officer Pigott about her missing cousin yesterday.

No, she had neither seen nor heard from either since.

Could the detective come in and look around? Sadie scowled, then grudgingly acquiesced.

He found nothing. He didn’t even notice the N?lmyna.

Later a pair of cops in a cruiser arrived and parked where Officer Pigott had. They sat there all night, and were relieved by a new pair who sat there all day. Rinse. Repeat.