Last night as we lay sunken into the couch, I heard a car horn somewhere down the street. It honked insistently a few times, stopped, and started again. And stopped, and started again. Sara got up to look out the window but saw nothing. It started again, stopped. Started again. A voice isolated from the angry, insistent din that you hear when traffic is backed up at the Holland Tunnel. But with no traffic, no tunnel.

As I gazed dumbly at the TV I tried to imagine what could possibly be going on. A solitary figure in a car, possibly parked, not even running. This person’s mind was breaking. What kind of grief, what kind of horror, must a human contemplate to lose it like that? To sit in a car and honk into the void—to make this wordless howl of anguish—for the better part of an hour?

Then it stopped.