His room smelled stale, unlived in, and it looked exactly how it had when Matty left it. The same clothes piled up on the bed. The same book laid face down on his bedside table. The same overflowing ashtray on the window sill. He’d half expected George to have relished the opportunity to organize and clean everything while he was away. But it looked as though George had simply closed the door and walked away, as if Matty had died and needed to be memorialized. He opened up the window, letting in frigid but fresh air. He pushed the clothes off the bed and onto the floor. He stretched himself out on the bed, lying flat on his back, feeling as if he were in a sort of limbo. The room fit him oddly, like an old suit, somehow both too small and too big. He didn’t feel like himself but he didn’t feel like someone else. He felt like no one.
