This story’s toneis represented well by its title—the prosaic mixes with the aspirational. The narrator works in special consular services, a job that, he often likes to daydream, might involve spies and war stories. In reality, the most glamorous part of his work is repatriating Americans who have crashed a rental car or failed to be cured at Lourdes. One day, he gets a call from the daughter of a woman who has died in Paris and whose body is awaiting repatriation. The daughter wants him to spend the night watching over the corpse, saying that, if the dead are left alone too long before burial, they might roam eternally. This is the setup for a story that explores how thinking about death and the afterlife is not merely the duty of religion or spirituality but is entwined with the daily work of living. In Camille Bordas’s deceptively quiet prose, the collision of completely likely events leads us to unlikely conclusions about love, death, and chance. —Willing Davidson, senior editor | 
