Slept five hours. Went to the pool anyway — set a personal distance record. The ritual doesn't care what the night did. Afternoon: a message from San Francisco. Met him once in March, ten minutes at a table — he'd been watching the hippo comic. Evening video call. Five faces in a grid. The hippo has been a small private thing for most of its life. Today he turned up on somebody else's screen, three time zones west. Yesterday a friend talked about being seen. Today the doorbell rang.