Missing Marbles counted the forks on the banquet table for the third time because the noise in the hall would not stop climbing. Forty-two forks. Six candles per candelabra. If he held the numbers in his head, the laughter and clatter could not push him under. He had come to his cousin's engagement feast because his mother said a strong man showed his face. Strong, to her, meant quiet and steady. She did not know he counted forks to keep from bolting. A hand landed on his shoulder. He flinched hard enough to rattle a glass. His uncle laughed and called him jumpy, then steered him toward a circle of men near the hearth. Someone asked a question about his work at the stone castle where he clerked. Missing Marbles answered plainly, in order, with the facts. The men waited for a joke that never came. One of them clapped him on the back and moved on. His aunt whispered that he had been rude again. He had not meant to be. He never meant to be. He stepped out through the kitchen door for air. The courtyard smelled of wet stone and roasting meat. A tall shape rose from beside the water trough. The dog was his father's old Great Dane, chest as high as his ribs, coat the color of rust. The Dane had followed him since he was ten. She pushed her heavy head under his hand before he could ask. He sat on the step. She lay across his boots, pinning him gently. The weight helped. His breathing slowed to match the slow rise of her flank. Inside, someone dropped a plate and the guests roared. He did not flinch this time, because the dog did not flinch. His mother found him there. She said he was embarrassing her. She said he should come inside and try harder. Missing Marbles looked up at her and, for the first time, did not stand. "I try hard every minute I am in that room," he said. "You only see the part where I fail." Her mouth opened and closed. He kept his voice level. He told her the noise hurt. He told her the fast talk hurt. He told her he was not broken and not rude, and that the dog knew it before anyone in the hall did. He said he would go home now, and he would come back tomorrow, on his own terms, in daylight, one guest at a time. She stared. Then she nodded once, small and stiff, and went back inside. Missing Marbles walked to the gate with his hand on the Dane's shoulder. He had spent years trying to pass as the son his family expected. Tonight he had stopped. The circle he needed was already walking beside him, four-legged and quiet, and that was enough to build the rest on.

Missing Marbles kept his word and returned to the feast the next morning, one guest at a time, until the house emptied by dusk. Then he went home to his own room and lay on the floor with the Great Dane across his legs. He tried to picture a week of dinners like the last one, then a month, then a year. His chest went tight before he reached the year. He sat up. The dog lifted her head. He said the thing he had been afraid to say out loud. He did not fit here. He was not going to start fitting. He pulled a satchel from under the bed and began to pack. Two shirts. A comb. The ledger he used at the clerks' office. His savings, wrapped in cloth, from three years of copying deeds. He listed cities in his head the way he listed forks. He crossed off the ones his uncles praised. He stopped at the one his mother spat about at every holiday, the one where, she said, men wore what they liked and strangers shared bread with strangers and no one knew their proper place. She had meant it as a warning. He took it as a direction. He wrote his mother a short note. He did not apologize. He said he was going, that he was well, and that he would send an address once he had one He walked to the coach station before sunrise and paid for the long seat. He counted the fence posts on the way out of town until the fields swallowed them. He arrived two days later, stiff and hungry, in a street he did not know. The buildings leaned toward each other at odd angles. Painted signs hung over painted doors. At the corner stood a pub shaped like something from a child's book, its walls set with small panes of colored glass in every shade he could name. Lanterns burned on either side of the door though the sun was still up. A woman in trousers carried a crate past him without looking twice at his satchel. Two men argued in a language he did not speak, then laughed, then kissed. Missing Marbles stopped in the middle of the street. He waited for the tightness in his chest. It did not come. The noise here was loud, but it was not aimed at him. No one was waiting for him to be someone else. He walked to the pub with the colored windows, pushed the door open, and asked the keeper if there was a room to let.