At a wedding party three years ago, he met an advertising model who was eleven years his junior. She was known for having many lovers, and most of them were rich, although this was not intentional. She told him she was studying pantomime and she picked up an imaginary orange and began to peel it. After that, he took her out to dinner a couple times and paid for her when she was broke. 

Two years ago, her father died and she inherited a small sum of money, and she decided she wanted to travel to North Africa. He connected her with someone at the Algerian embassy and she returned from the trip three months later with a new rich man who worked in trading. He’d met them both at the airport and taken them to dinner. 

Every time he runs into her after this day, the man is with her, usually driving an expensive sports car. One October Sunday, she called him and asked if they could come over to his house and they ate and smoked weed together. The model smoked too much and passed out in her underwear in his bedroom. He and the boyfriend continued to smoke together and the man told him that sometimes he burns barns. He was taken aback and asked to learn more about why the man does this. The man said he burns one barn every two months, but that he’d never told anyone about it except him because he is a novelist and is likely curious about human behavior. The man said that he has already scouted out his next barn, which is very near to the house they’re currently in. 

The next day, he went to the bookstore and bought a map of the area he lives in on which he mapped out the nearby barns — sixteen, in total. After eliminating those close to houses and filled with fuel or fertilizer, he was left with five options. The next morning, he went for an early run past all five barns. He ran this route every day for the next month, but still no barns were burned, and he wondered if the boyfriend had tried to get him to burn a barn, and he does consider striking the match himself. 

In December, he found the man in a coffee shop who said he’d burned the barn near his house ten days after he visited, although he didn’t remember seeing any barn disappear. The man asked if he’d seen the model recently, and he said no. He tried calling her multiple times, but got no response and when he went to her old apartment he found a new tenant had moved in. Every morning since, he’s continued to run by the barns and at night he imagines all five burning to the ground.