Excerpt: At the End of Jane

The last light of evening, as dull gray as slate, as viscous as oil, poured down the ventilation shaft. The air was slick and sodden with rain. Iron bars and grates dripped rusty water. Shards of mist fell and swirled and battered themselves against the sand-colored bricks of the walls and the grimy glass of the windows.

Most of the windows were dark, their narrow square panes reflecting indistinct shapes of black and tan. In the apartment directly across from Oliver’s, though, a single green candle burned in a glass tumbler. Its quivering light touched, in quick succession, a cabinet of blond oak, a dented hotpot on a countertop of beige formica, a round nightstand of white melamine, and around again, and around again.

Oliver sat in his darkened room, staring between the brown slats of his venetian blinds. He waited, watching, until the gray of dusk melted away and the rain faded into the murk. The darting flame, far across the shaft, on the other side of his neighbor’s windowpane, burned a tiny hole in his vision. And then, yes, at last, when all the light was gone, except for the light of the candle, he could see the shape of a leg, bent at the knee, hanging off the side of a bare mattress. Pale skin. Whorls of black hair. The limb shifted, and he could make out the top of a white sock.