The man woke in the bed in the strange house. He lay in the bed with the covers drawn to his chest, his head neatly propped on pillows, his hands laid down on the comforter, way down there at the ends of his arms. He looked at his hands and remembered how he’d liked to take a pinch of skin on the back of his grandfather’s hand and arrange it until the hand was a landscape of slowly crumbling peaks and spreading valleys, when his grandfather had become old and his skin like paper.
This reminded the man that he was old. He lay in the bed and surveyed the room, which was pleasant and lived-in and filled with unfamiliar objects. He lay on the bed’s right side. The left side’s covers were folded back in a neat triangle to reveal the sheet underneath, which held a depression, like someone had lain there. From outside the bedroom came the sound of a refrigerator switching on. There was a slant of sunlight bisecting the curtains and cutting diagonally across the bed, laid warm across his legs. It caught motes of dust and made a wall of sun that split the room. A mote of dust was like a single note, and thus the wall of sunshine was a symphony of dust. He didn’t quite know where he was but was used to that, so it was alright. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again the wall of sun had moved and had sunk into his chest, and he felt hot. He folded back the covers and found himself already in his clothes; a bit odd. He sat up. Outside of the covers was cooler. He removed the covers from his legs with many small movements, like one removes crumbs, and moved his feet closer to the edge, and, hunching, swung them over and down until they touched the floor. There was a pair of formless brown loafers beside the bed. He negotiated his feet inside them, and they fit. He pushed against the bed and rose halfway, and the bed drew him back down. He tried again and slowly stood, straightening in a manner more plantlike than animal, reached for the cane propped against the nightstand, and began the long journey across the bedroom, towards the mystery of the door.