Isaac bears a strong resemblance to an object in motion, an object that will stay in motion for good. This despite his grey hair, crepey skin, and upcoming 66th birthday. Isaac paces his office while he chats with his new colleague, a freshly minted economics professor. Isaac periodically folds and unfolds his long arms.

“As a species, we ought to be able to understand why our lifespan is 100 years, or so,” he says. “But we don’t. Not yet anyway.”

Isaac packs up his books and papers and begins his late afternoon walk home. He thinks about why corporations, like humans, age and die. He suspects the link between the longevity of both lies in attention to growth and expansiveness. But at what rate, he doesn’t know.

The light that accompanies him home dapples the canary yellow and wine-colored autumn leaves. The air smells of pine needles and decomposing wood. Isaac wipes his boots on the well-worn welcome mat, unlocks the heavy oak door, and steps inside.

He takes off his boots and places them beside the brick hearth. He breathes in the smokey remnants of this morning’s fire and begins to build one anew. Snapshots of his late wife, Annie, and his two daughters, Meira and Rose, line the mantle. Isaac turns on the radio, pours himself a glass of wine, and tucks himself into his favorite chair. He rests his stocking feet on the leather hassock, closes his eyes, and takes in the latest news.

The ringing of the phone interrupts the radio announcer’s report about a mid-autumn snowstorm that has killed four and stranded thousands. For a moment, he considers letting the phone ring, but instead Isaac pads into the kitchen and gently lifts the receiver.

“Hi, Daddy. It’s Meira. Did I interrupt? Do you want to come over for dinner tomorrow night? David will be here.”

“I have a little studying to do, but I could save that for later.” Pacing, he rakes his hand through his thick silver hair. “Is everything alright? How’s David’s work coming along?”

“He’s fine. It’s fine. I don’t want to keep you. See you tomorrow, then?”

Isaac studies the mouthpiece, holding it at a distance. He pictures Meira with both elbows propped up on the kitchen counter, phone pressed to her ear, just as she was when she was a teenager. He places the heavy receiver back on the hook without making a sound.

The clock says 5:50 pm. Meira closes the novel she had been reading and places it on the teakwood table. She imagines herself slipping out the back door into the fading evening light. And why not? Why not. She’s been thinking about leaving for some time but always gets distracted.

If anyone had bothered to ask, Meira would admit that she often has to give a moment’s thought to the date she and David married. Granted, it was an unremarkable date, one chosen to avoid marrying on Friday the 13th. And this annoys her. More precisely, what annoys her is giving credence to superstitious notions.

But what annoys Meira even more, 11 years after she and David were married, was not that he, her oft-absent husband, has just dropped an unopened jar of pickles on the kitchen floor, but that this man, David, had stood motionless long after the jar shattered, transforming itself into a pool of glass shards, pickle slices, and brine that bled onto the rosewood floor.

How could anyone stand there motionless for so long, she wonders. But that’s just what David does, this boyish, barefoot, middle-aged professor. He stands there motionless in the midst of their kitchen. That is, until he finally turns his gaze toward Meira and regards her, she presumes, in a way that implies she was the one who lost hold of the jar, that she was the one who had made this mess. The odor of vinegar and dill permeates the kitchen.

Meira listens to the sound of water coming up to a boil in the tea kettle, a gift from her mother on her last birthday. David’s gaze slides to the stovetop. The kettle whistles.

David thinks about the legal pad lined with mathematical calculations sitting idle on his desk in the den. I should have finished what I was doing before I came down here, he thinks, annoyed. Now, this. David covers his face with his hands and massages his forehead. He feels a headache coming on.

Meira resists the urge to kneel before the jar’s remnants, like she would have last year or the year before that, delicately selecting the largest shards of glass to place in a paper bag destined for the outside trash. Instead, she turns off the flame, quieting the kettle, and retreats upstairs to the den.

“Meira. Meira, give me a hand here, will you?”

Meira collapes on the couch and props her head on a throw pillow adorned with pumpkin-colored koi. She closes her eyes and tucks herself under a throw. A breeze slips through the open window, giving rise to the aroma of paper and pencil shavings. It is her husband’s scent. It was the scent of her childhood.

David calls after her once again. She could have sworn she had been dreaming about water, but the clock says it’s only 6:05. She kicks off the throw and makes her way downstairs.

Meira sighs and steps over the mess. David kneels next to a paper bag and begins placing glass shards inside of it. Meira slides open the knife drawer and removes the kitchen shears. A ray of pain shoots through her left heel where a splinter of glass has embedded itself. She stoops down and removes it, then limps across the kitchen and slips through the back door to the edge of the deck. Meira leans forward, head and shoulders draped over the rail.

David stumbles toward the back door but stops at the threshold. From where David stands, he hears the crisp sound of the shears working. Locks of Meira’s greying hair, once auburn, fall away, coming to rest on the asters below. The smell of rain and mulch rise up from the garden.

David once again regards his wife. Her slim, muscular legs ground her to the carefully finished wooden deck. Her left hand rests on top of the damp rail. David fingers a chipped button on his faded denim shirt. He runs the smooth skin back and forth across the button’s sharp, white edge. He considers how Meira uses her left hand to write but her right hand for everything else. Meira rakes her right hand through her hair. Straightening, she takes a deep breath, silently exhales, and turns toward him.

He walks to where Meira stands and gently cradles her head in both his hands. The feel of her shorn hair startles him. He studies her face. Her eyes meet his. Meira smiles and lets out a melencholy laugh. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close, holding her tight.

David opens the front door and steps aside to let Isaac in. The familiar scent of a Friday night dinner, roasted chicken, greets Isaac. He thinks of long-ago Friday night dinners with Annie and the girls. He thinks of Rose, his elder daughter, now working as a conservator back in Boston.

“How’ve you been, Isaac?”
“Well, things are getting interesting.”
“I thought of you the other day when Stefan, you know, my friend from Los Angeles, came for a visit. You know, he’s interested in sleep and structural dynamics. Did you get a chance to talk with him?”
“Yeah, yeah, you know, economies of scale, resilience and growth. Maybe there’s something more to it though,” says Isaac, opening his hands, palms up.
Meira joins the two, trying to catch Isaac’s eye, but he’s looking past her, at David.
“Hi, Daddy. How was your week?” She hugs Isaac. He smells the scent of cooking in her hair.
“You working hard? Look at you.”
“I cut my hair, Daddy. Cut my losses.” Meira smiles. “You hungry?”
“When’s your next trip, David?”
“Tomorrow. Meira insisted that I go up to Minneapolis for the conference.” David studies Meira for a moment. “I feel a little guilty, going again so soon, but I think it’ll be worth it.”

David speeds north on I-35 West heading towards the downtown Minneapolis Hyatt. In his rush to secure the rental car, he’d forgotten to call his wife to say his flight landed safely. If traffic comes to a standstill, he’ll give her a call, he thinks, if not, he’ll give her a ring after he checks into the hotel.

By the time he reaches the Mississippi River Bridge, an eight-lane steel affair, the evening rush hour is in full swing. David cracks open the driver’s window. As the traffic slows and comes to a crawl, a FedEx truck pulls alongside the rental car treating him to a cocktail of diesel fumes and burning brakes and blocking his view of Saint Anthony Falls, just below.

He switches on the radio. The announcer says that The New England Journal of Medicine reports that Oscar, a hospice cat, can predict which patients will die hours before their death. Reuters reports that a Russian subcontractor claims Iran’s first nuclear power reactor will be ready in August 2008. The Associated Press reports that The University of Colorado fired the controversial American academic Ward Churchill after accusations of academic misconduct.

At that very moment, right there on the Mississippi River Bridge, while the announcer keeps announcing, a gusset plate, a metal plate that connects beams and girders to steel columns, tears away from its rivets. The rental car begins to tremble. David can feel the bridge undulate beneath him. He presses hard on the break pedal. He grasps the steering wheel with both hands, holding on, trying to make sense of what is happening. With that, the bridge collapses into the water below.

Engineers will later call what happened “a catastrophic failure,” one brought on by neglect.

Arms folded across her chest, Meira resists the urge to check the flights to find out if David has landed in one piece. Instead, she leans against the kichen counter and watches the coffee steep inside the French press. She waits patiently so she can push the plunger down just at the right moment. Satsified, she pours the coffee into her favorite mug and watches the dark, muddy liquid blend with the warmed cream at the bottom of the cup. Meira picks up her mug in both hands, takes a sip, and slips out the back door into the fading evening light.