Eight days after Arthur Leander’s death, Jeevan lies on his brother Frank’s sofa in a tower on Toronto’s south edge, staring at the ceiling and trying to remember the exact end of his last encounter connected to Arthur.

Jeevan’s thoughts jump back to Arthur’s publicist, who had escorted him out without meeting his eyes and shut the door in his face. Jeevan realizes that moment already feels impossibly distant, as if it happened seven years ago.

As the crisis outside worsens, Jeevan fixates on small comforts like cappuccinos and beer, worried he may never have them again. The thought becomes a way to measure how quickly normal life is disappearing.

Frank works nearby on a ghostwriting job, a philanthropist’s memoir that he is contractually forbidden to name. With cell phones no longer working and no landline in the apartment, Jeevan worries about his girlfriend and his house in Cabbagetown and whether he will ever see either again, while snow keeps falling as the world ends.