A. Homes - This Book Will Save Your Life

"Are you asking because you want to know if it's your fault?"

"I suppose."

"To one degree or another, I'm sure it's your fault. Feel better now?"

IN THE MORNING, Billy picks up Nic, Anhil, and Richard in a huge SUV and takes them looking for real estate; Barth rides shotgun with the camera.

"This is so exciting," Anhil says, "going shopping with my big American backings."

"Who is watching the store?" Nic asks Anhil.

"My brother."

"So — you're opening a new business?" Billy says.

"Yes, Mr. Hill." Anhil has decided that Billy's name is Mr. Hill, and no one can bring themselves to correct him.

"It's actually a branch of an already existing operation," Nic adds.

"A donut shop," Anhil says.

"Would they be cooking donuts on site? A lot of people have problems with odors — you know, dry cleaners, bakeries."

"No cooking — the donuts will be cooked downtown and delivered to the new location," Richard says, definitively, when in fact he's making it up.

"Are you scouting locations?" someone on the street asks after they circle the same block three times.

"Yes."

"For a movie?"

"No, a donut shop; do you think this would be a good spot for a Donut Depot?"

The guy shrugs. "I'm wheat-free."

They look at locations, with parking, without parking — one was a former bakery, another a bank with a drive-through window, and one was a store that sold "pieces of the imagination" and went out of business quickly.

"They must have really believed they were going to make money, because they spent a lot on the renovation," Billy says.

"It has to be easy," Nic says. "Everything about it has to be easy. No one wants to think too hard about getting a donut— they'll talk themselves out of it."

Everywhere they go, they buy cups of coffee — hot coffee, iced soy latte.

"Did you notice the napkins in there? They had really thick napkins, not the rough one-ply ones. What's more cost-effective, a lot of thin napkins or one nice thick one?" Nic asks.

They cruise like teenage boys — except with the needs of old men. "Is there a restroom? I drank all that coffee and now I need to take a leak." They cruise and, like all guys riding in cars, they can't help talking about women, except Billy — Billy talks about men, sometimes as though they were women, as in, "He was such a bitch." They talk about women who dumped them and how sometimes they didn't even catch on to the idea that they were being dumped.

"When I was about fourteen, I was dumped by a girl at a party — she met another guy she liked better, and when I asked her what was so great about him she turned around and in front of everyone screamed in my face, 'You're a turd!' " Nic says. "It took me a full year to recover."

"I crave women, it is never enough," Anhil says, then, turning to Nic, "When you were famous, did you get a lot of girls? Ever have two at once? Three? That's my fantasy."

"I had a lot," Nic says.

"Did you do anything like take photographs of them?" Anhil has the ability to ask questions that would otherwise seem rude, but because of his intonation, the innocence with which he asks, Nic just smiles and answers.

"No photos," Nic says.

Anhil tells the story of his cousin who came to America and opened a photo-developing booth in the parking lot of a shopping mall. "No luck," Anhil says. "Everyone went digital, business was poor. And then, one day, a tractor-trailer making a delivery to the furniture store backed up into the photo booth and squashed him — he never knew what happened. He was the blind spot."

They cruise for hours and finally find a spot on Montana Avenue. "I purposely didn't show it to you first; it's small, but it's a good location. You can put tables outside, there's parking. It's a corner. I think corners are good for cafes."

"I like these trees," Nic says. "This is a place where you could sit for a while."

"Oh, it is very pretty. It is upstream," Anhil says.

"Upscale," Nic says.

"That too," Anhil says. "We can put an auto-rickshaw station out front — to make deliveries."

"What is an auto rickshaw?" Billy asks.

"Bajaj auto rickshaw," Anhil says. "It has three wheels, one in front and two in the back; the joke is, if the rickshaw can get its front wheel into a parking space you can push the rest of the rickshaw in… Good for crowded places, but here it would be for fun delivery."

"Let's do it," Richard says.

"Thank you," Anhil says to everyone. "Thank you. This is my dream come true."

ON WEDNESDAY, at breakfast, Richard announces, "I'm going to be out late tonight, if that's all right."

"You can have her over here," Ben says.

"No, I can't. I haven't dated in years — it's all too strange. At best, it's an experiment."

"Should I call and check on you?"

"I'll be fine," Richard says. "I just wanted to be sure you'd be all right."

"I'm good."

In the afternoon, Richard goes to the liquor store, prowls up and down the aisles agonizing over what the right wine would be. Finally he picks out something overpriced — decent, but nothing spectacular.

When he gets to her house, she is working in the garden. She greets him with a kiss; he can smell her scent — spicy, like clove. She leads him into the house and directly into the bedroom, undressing him and herself quickly. Nude, he is still holding the bottle of wine. She takes it from him as they lie back on her bed. They make love. He pays special attention to the scar, the absent breast, and then, feeling like he's trying too hard, he devotes himself to the one lonely breast — which now maybe isn't so lonely, because it's getting all the attention. They make love for what feels like hours; the sun goes down, the moon rises. They make love like animals, it is entirely about the body, about their most primitive needs.

In a postcoital surge of affection he accidentally blurts, "I love you." The phrase hangs in the air, suspended, unanswered. She reaches under the bed and pulls out her earthquake kit.

"What's in it?" he asks.

"At the moment — my joints."

"What else?"

"One hundred one-dollar bills, my makeup — I couldn't bear to be in a shelter without a little makeup, I look like hell in the morning. Bars of chocolate, solar cell-phone battery, water-purification tablets, aspirin. Should I go on?"

"How much pot do you keep in there?"

"Not a lot, maybe ten joints." She lights one and hands it to him.

She brings dinner into bed — ripe cheeses, avocado, olives, tomatoes she's dried herself, caponata she made, pesto she crushed in a bowl she made in a pottery class. He thinks about something Joseph said at the meditation: "There is great comfort in daily ritual, feeding yourself from the garden." As they are eating, she tells him that when she goes hiking she eats things she finds along the way — mushrooms, ferns. She tells him her hair is the color of copper because she uses a dye she makes herself; she tells him that she studied to be a belly dancer, and that she has given names to all of her plants — Margaret, Jonas, Yvette. "All things do better when they have a name," she says. He thinks again of Joseph, talking about the struggle for transcendence played out against the fact that we are "placed" in life in a human body. Something she says cuts through his thoughts: "You've given me great confidence; next time we make love, let's do it in a public place."

IN THE MORNING, it hurts to pee; Richard calls to make an appointment with Dr. Lusardi.

"I have nothing available," the receptionist says.

"When might something open up?"

"Dr. Lusardi is not with this office anymore. I have to put you on hold, one moment please." He waits, wondering what happened to Lusardi. She picks up. "Dr. Anderson suggests that you come in and speak with him."