She was unnerved, trying to laugh. “I mean…”

“I’m talking about trade winds.” He stayed there, naked, legs spread, absently playing with his penis. “The trade winds, okay? They’re gone. Done.”

She looked past him at the long-lying clouds, grey over the harbor.

“Trade winds are the foundation of all weather. No trade winds, no weather. Everything will just stay the same, whatever that is.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It’s like this. Think about street signs, all right?” He strode across the room, his bare feet slapping the wooden floor. “Say the street signs just started changing, right? The signs at the corners, the names just changing, Park Avenue to something else.”

“You mean, getting replaced by workers?”

“No, just changing, the signs themselves, the letters and numbers changing, 42nd Street suddenly something else.”

The day had been sucked into a drifting fog, the black glass of the building across lost in the thick shroud.

“And the only way to track it would be to launch a sticker campaign, tagging the signs that change and sharing that information through a central hub.”

“I don’t understand anything you are saying.”

“It’s a metaphor. I’m trying to get you to understand.”

“I don’t.”

He had her back to her now, at the edge of the hallway.”You would have probably been better off without me. I think about that, how you would be if none of this had ever happened. You would have been better off.”

She closed her eyes and imagined it.

“Everyone would have been. Even me.”