Chapter 18: Eleven at Night on the Forty-Third Floor

She knocked.

That was the first thing. Carol does not knock — has not knocked on a door in our shared domestic history with any regularity I can measure, because knocking implies uncertainty about whether you are welcome, and Carol Danvers does not experience that particular uncertainty as a rule. She opens doors. She arrives. The knock, two quiet raps against the frame rather than the panel, was a form of grammar I had not heard from her before, and I understood it immediately for what it was: a request rather than an entrance.

"Come in," I said, as though I did not know.