These Dreams of You

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What would a room at the beginning of time sound like? she wonders back at the hotel later that night — or is it morning? sometime, night or morning, after returning from the center of the capital’s ancient quarter where the driver took her, when Viv looks at a western calendar rather than an Ethiopian one and realizes the date is a week later than she thought. Could I have lost track of time that much? she asks, standing on her hotel balcony, looking at a photograph in her hand as though it has an answer, when all it has is the face of a young woman who is dead.