I knew she'd come from the way my books were alphabetized on the shelf. From the smell of lemon and tea leaves that lingered in the doorways, I knew she'd stayed.

When I finally found her she was sitting with her eyes closed, her hands curled around an Oriental tea cup like white spiders, her veins swimming faintly beneath the surface of her skin. She must have brought the cup with her, because it wasn't mine. Her shirt hung off her shoulder. From the looks of her, it might have fit her at one point, but now she was just wasting away. She barely sunk into the black leather of the couch.

"You kept the key," I said. She glanced up at me. I won't ever forget the look in her eyes.

"Yeah," she said, "I did."

I wanted to keep her here, but she didn't look like she belonged. The loft was made in her image, solemn and stylish. The floors were expensive hardwood and there was art on the walls. There were tall bookshelves full of books I never read. Now the loft belonged to her ghost. Her partly skeletal body didn't suit it at all.

She fidgeted. I stood in the same place on the rug, and watched her. She reached out and took the candle off the coffee table, and carefully chipped the stray wax off the edges. It was useless; she was just avoiding my eyes. Either way, I still noticed the way she still kept her nails long and was so gentle with this, the way she was with everything. I loved that about her.

Finally, she cleared her throat and looked at me. If I was a better man I might have looked her in the eyes and said something useful, but instead I studied one of her faded acne scars. I could feel her gaze on me. It was wavering. It was unsure. She was never sure.

"I want to stay here tonight. Can I stay here tonight?"

I met her eyes. "This loft is yours."

She smiled coldly. It was the first time I'd seen her smile in a year. And then she got up and walked around me, and I listened to her footsteps, lilting on the oak and only audible in the pure, terrible silence.

Outside, the city lights began to blur in the summer rain.

She stayed. She let me hold her all through the night, but she wasn't there when I woke up. Still, she stayed.

Books sprouted where ever she touched, in the kitchen and the living room and on my computer desk, all classic titles written in sardonic styles. Here and there I found a paper crane.

She left lemon and tea leaves in the kitchen, and one plate on the table filled with bacon and eggs and a cinnamon roll slathered with icing and butter. She was at the table when I came in. She wasn't looking at me. Instead, she was folding another paper crane.

She was supposed to be clumsy, because she spilled every chemical she touched and dropped my vases more than enough times. But her hands were so gentle that I forgave her every time. I swallowed hard to down the longing I felt—every fiber of my being wished that she would touch me like she touched that paper crane, her tiny fingers ghosting over the folds. She'd done it so many times that her work was beyond fault.

I coughed gently. She didn't look up, but she was listening.

"Thank you for breakfast."

"It's the least I could do."

I wondered darkly if she was going to do any more than that. Sometimes avoiding her was the only thing I could do not to hate her. But I could never hate her and look her in the eyes at the same time. So I couldn't hate her now. Her eyes, some brown color that I never found entirely special, were on me. The paper crane was sitting finished on the table.

Her lips were pursed, almost like a blatant refusal to speak. I opened my mouth. I wanted to ask her something mundane. I wanted this to be normal. But it wasn't going to be. I knew faintly somewhere that her life up until now was some cliché form of failure, but I didn't want to bring it up. I didn't want to talk about success or failure or how she thought she was a shitty person and sometimes she was. I was, too, for keeping my mouth shut. I could have changed her a long time ago with the right combination of words.

I could never understand words the way she did. Instead, I built her a loft, but I didn't know enough to keep her there.

I ate the food she made me, and she relieved my tension.

"Do you go to the office today?"

I shook my head. I might have, but if I left now she wouldn't be here when I came back. So I was going to stay; and besides, drawing more plans would just lead to another place just like this one, another living space made with her face in my mind in which she would never set foot, let alone live in. She didn't live, she floated—probably from hotel to hotel and an apartment here and there. I didn't like to think of her as living like that (because she had a home with me, here).

And because she did, I said, "I'll stay here. With you."