Excerpt from Counting Backwards by Binnie Kirshenbaum, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

People who see ghosts tend to see the same ghost wafting down the same staircase, but none of the characters populating Leo's wacko hallucinations have returned for a repeat performance. However, a distinct pattern has emerged: these ornate, vividly articulated visions, like the earlier halos and angels, are seen exclusively from your living room window and they occur between nine and eleven at night, with two exceptions: the cauldron of bats emerged from a cave and flew en masse up to the moon at 8:32, and it was close to midnight when the troupe of actors arrived, smack in the middle of the street, illuminated by streetlamps like torches in an amphitheater, treating Leo to a snippet of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act IV, scene i, Titania, Bottom, and the whole slew of fairies.

The following night, you called Leo to the window. "Look. It's Hitler and Leni Riefenstahl. They're making a movie."

"I'm not amused," he said, but he was amused, and you laughed as if these hallucinations were nothing but one more example of Leo's personality peculiarities, no different from the way he uses three towels, per shower, to dry off, or from that time he came home with eleven different kinds of salt: Himalayan pink, black lava, Alaskan flake, and who knows what else. They all tasted the same. They all tasted like salt.

The frequency of the hallucinations remains more or less constant, but your level of concern is rising to the point where it's become too tall to suppress, and now when, yet again, Leo mentions casually that he ought to check in with Sam, your response is not casual, as it was before. "Yes," you say. "You do. How about tomorrow, okay? First thing. Promise me?"

Promise. How many people keep, or even try to keep, every promise made? You know of no one, other than Leo. True to his word, first thing in the morning, he calls Sam's office, only to learn that Sam is on vacation, a month in Belize.

You suggest that, instead of waiting for Sam to return, maybe he should see someone else, but no. Leo is Boy Scout loyal to his physicians, all of whom have been carefully and critically vetted. Physician is Leo's word. Not doctor. Physician, which does not necessarily connote respect. The same way the FBI flags any applicant who's racked up frequent-flier miles with Aeroflot, Leo is highly suspicious of any physician who goes around blithely prescribing whatever newly approved FDA wonder drug that whichever pill-pusher from Pfizer happened to be selling that day. Leo's physicians investigate, for themselves, things like trial reliability, statistical efficacy, and potential side effects because, yes, this drug decidedly alleviates cluster headaches, but it's also possible that your liver will explode. Leo values their intellectual and professional curiosity, and he respects their expertise within their field, for the part of the body on which they've staked their claim, the same way he respects skilled electricians and the woman who cuts his hair.

Now, regardless of his high regard for Sam, a month is a long time, and you remind him, "What about early detection and all that?"

"He'll be back in three weeks," Leo says. "Whatever it is, it's not an emergency. There's no reason to worry. Trust me, okay?"

You do trust Leo. You trust him implicitly and always, but nonetheless you have to wonder how, from a sixth-floor window down to the street, he was able to see the lentils in Gandhi's pot.

Excerpted from Counting Backwards by Binnie Kirshenbaum. Copyright © 2025 by Binnie Kirshenbaum. Excerpted by permission of Soho Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.