It’s sleeting and our beautiful apartment in Chicago is being taken apart and put in a truck. The windows are rainspattered, the snow is drab, and the buildings are tired brick fortresses holding back the winter. Claude is tiny and smiling, sleeping, waking, eating, squeaking, poorly regulated but highly permeable, dragged around with us everywhere as we pack. The hallway is all boxes, piled too high, we have too many things, now they’re being carried away one after another. And then with a dull shock everything is gone except one last rug, upon which Claude sits, like an orphan floating through an empty space. Finally we are gone too.