Thousand: Four Hundred Fifty-Eight

had been so important he’d had to work on it during those most precious nighttime hours was now so cleanly gone, wasn’t that itself frightening? Imagine forgetting all the plans for a party. A party for which you are the host becomes a surprise party? How pleasant! Imagine forgetting the subject of your dissertation. You step into the faculty office to be quizzed and can only smile dumbly as the professors probe your knowledge of gender pronouns in Dickinson. The stuff of nightmares! As Bernie poured himself a second coffee and picked away at the heart of the muffin he