“You buy her shampoo?”

“We buy everything. She’s always traveling. Kitchen’s this way.”

I followed him through the house, which was huge and immensely cluttered. There was mail piled on the island, recycling stacked by the back door, and the light on the answering machine was blinking nonstop, the way it does when the memory is packed.

“You know,” I said, “for someone so strict about her diet, I’d expect her to be more anal about her house.”

“She used to be, before the divorce,” Nate said, taking the cake from me and sliding it into the fridge. “Since then, it’s gone kind of downhill.”

“That explains the Xanax,” I said as he took a bottle out of the pharmacy bag, sticking it on the counter.

“You think?”

I turned to the fridge, a portion of which was covered with pictures of various Hollywood actresses dressed in bikinis. On a piece of paper above them, in black marker, was written THINK BEFORE YOU SNACK! “Yes,” I said. “She must be really intense.”

“Probably is,” Nate said, glancing over at the fridge. “I’ve never met her.”

“Really? ”

“Sure,” he said. “That’s kind of the whole point of the business. They don’t have to meet us. If we’re doing our job right, their stuff just gets done.”

“Still,” I said, “you have to admit, you’re privy to a lot. I mean, look at how much we know about her just from this kitchen.”

“Maybe. But you can’t really know anyone just from their house or their stuff. It’s just a tiny part of who they are.” He grabbed his keys off the counter. “Come on. We’ve got four more places to hit before we can quit for the day.”

I had to admit it was hard work, or at least harder than it looked. In a way, though, I liked it. Maybe because it reminded me of Commercial, driving up to houses and leaving things, although in this case we got to go inside, and often picked things up, as well. Plus there was something interesting about these little glimpses you got into people’s lives: their coat closet, their garage, what cartoons they had on their fridge. Like no matter how different everyone seemed, there were some things that everyone had in common.

Our last stop was a high-rise apartment building with a clean, sleek lobby. As I followed Nate across it, carrying the last of the dry-cleaning, I could hear both our footsteps, amplified all around us.

“So what’s the story here?” I asked him as we got into the elevator. I pulled the dry-cleaning tag where I could see it. “Who’s P. Collins?”

“A mystery,” he said.

“Yeah? How so?”

“You’ll see.”

On the seventh floor, we stepped out into a long hall lined with identical doors. Nate walked down about halfway, then pulled out his keys and opened the door in front of him. “Go ahead,” he said.

When I stepped in, the first thing I was aware of was the stillness. Not just a sense of something being empty, but almost hollow, even though the apartment was fully furnished with sleek, contemporary furniture. In fact, it looked like something out of a magazine, that perfect.

“Wow,” I said as Nate took the cleaning from me, disappearing into a bedroom that was off to the right. I walked over to a row of windows that looked out over the entire town, and for miles farther; it was like being on top of the world. “This is amazing.”

“It is,” he said, coming back into the room. “Which is why it’s so weird that whoever it belongs to is never here.”

“They must be,” I said. “They have dry-cleaning.”

“That’s the only thing, though,” he said. “And it’s just a duvet cover. We pick it up about every month or so.”

I walked into the kitchen, looking around. The fridge was bare, the counters spotless except for one bottle cap, turned upside down. “Aha,” I said. “They drink root beer.”

“That’s mine,” Nate said. “I left it there last time as an experiment, just to see if anyone moved it or threw it away.”

“And it’s still here?”

“Weird, right?” He walked back over to the windows, pulling open a glass door. Immediately I could smell fresh air blowing in. “I figure it’s got to be a rental, or some company -owned kind of deal. For visiting executives or something. ”

I went into the living room, scanning a low bookcase by the couch. There were a few novels, a guide to traveling in Mexico, a couple of architectural-design books. “I don’t know,” I said. “I bet someone lives here.”

“Well, if they do, I feel for them,” he said, leaning into the open door. “They don’t even have any pictures up.”

“Pictures? ”

“You know, of family or friends. Some proof of a life, you know?”

I thought of my own room back at Cora’s—the blank walls, how I’d only barely unpacked. What would someone think, coming in and seeing my stuff? A few clothes, some books. Not much to go on.

Nate had gone outside, and was now on the small terrace, looking out into the distance. When I came to stand next to him, he looked down at my hand, still crisscrossed with scratches. “Oh, I totally forgot,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small tube. “I got something at One World for that.”

BOYD’S BALM, it said in red letters. As he uncapped it, I said, “What is this, exactly?”