The raccoon appeared on a Tuesday. Bob was sitting in his kitchen, drinking coffee that had gone cold twenty minutes ago, when he heard a scratching at the back door. He opened the door and the raccoon was there, sitting on the porch steps, holding its left front paw off the ground. It was bleeding.

Bob closed the door and sat back down. He drank the cold coffee. He thought about closing the door and going back to what he had been doing, which was nothing in particular, sitting in a dark kitchen drinking bad coffee and thinking about how long it had been since he had done anything that mattered.

He opened the door again.

The raccoon was still there. It looked at him. It did not move its paw.

Bob went to the cabinet and got the first aid kit. He had bought it two years ago, when he still lived with Linda, and he had never used it. The bandages were still in their wrappers. The antiseptic was unopened. He knelt on the porch and gently took the raccoon's paw in his hand. It was warm and rough and small. The cut was shallow—a slice, maybe from broken glass, maybe from a fence. He cleaned it with antiseptic. The raccoon did not struggle. It just sat there, watching him with dark, reflective eyes, while Bob wrapped the paw with a bandage that was slightly too big.

He went inside and got some food. Peanut butter, from the jar that had been sitting open for a week. He put it on a plate and set it on the porch. The raccoon ate it slowly, carefully, its good paws working the spoon-like fingers with a dexterity that made Bob think, for no reason, about his father, who had been a watchmaker and could fix anything with small, precise movements.

The raccoon finished the peanut butter and looked at Bob. Then it turned and walked down the steps and disappeared into the yard.

Bob closed the door.

He came back the next day with more peanut butter. The raccoon was there, sitting on the same spot on the steps. It did not have the bandage anymore. The paw looked better. It ate the peanut butter and left.

Day three. Day four. Day five. The raccoon came every day at the same time—around noon, when Bob was sitting in the kitchen doing nothing. It always sat on the same spot. It always ate the peanut butter. It always looked at him before it left.

Bob did not name the raccoon. He did not have a name for it. It was just the raccoon. That was all it was.

On day seven, the raccoon's paw was fully healed. It held it on the ground this time, when Bob opened the door. It ate the peanut butter, slower than usual, and then it sat on the steps for a long time, just sitting there, looking at Bob. Bob sat on the floor, on the other side of the door, looking at it through the crack at the bottom.

Then the raccoon stood up and walked away. It did not look back.

Bob watched it go. He watched until it disappeared over the fence into the neighbor's yard. He closed the door. He sat on the floor for a while. Then he got up and made a new cup of coffee, and this one he let finish going cold before he drank it.

The raccoon did not come back the next day. Or the next. Or the next. Bob did not go looking for it. He did not expect it to come back. Animals do not keep appointments. That is not what they do.

He went to the unemployment office on Thursday. The line was long. The woman at the counter did not look at him when she handed him the form. He filled it out in blue ink, the same blue ink he had used to fill out all the other forms in the last two years—job applications, benefit requests, loan extensions, everything that asked for a name and an address and a reason why things had gone wrong.

The weather turned cold in October. Bob put on a heavier coat and stopped sitting in the kitchen during the day. He sat in the living room instead, in front of the television, watching programs he did not pay attention to. Sometimes he thought about going to the back door, just to check. Just to see if the raccoon was there. But he never did.

One morning in November, he opened the back door to get the newspaper and saw a set of paw prints in the frost on the porch steps. Four toes, a long tail drag mark, the outline of a paw that looked almost human if you looked at it from the right angle.

Bob stood on the porch for a minute. Then he picked up the newspaper and went inside and set it on the table and went back to the living room and sat down and turned on the television and did not watch it.

The frost melted. The ground softened. The year ended. Bob applied for unemployment again. The winter was long and cold and nothing happened.