The not-quite-not-yet-maybe-soon Natalia took another sip of beer then brushed his trousered leg with one bare foot. Her present-tense self trembled. He didn’t seem to notice. Talking to her was a pretext to speak whatever he usually left unspoken even to himself.

“You wouldn’t be able to tell now, but Sylvia was a bonfire all on her own, obsessed with her poetry and me,” he said. “It was exhausting. And I did the adultery part, a couple of times. I was a dick. For a while, she was really depressed. Never tried to kill herself or anything. She’s not capable of harming herself. I did know that. Too beautiful. Too much respect for the object.”

If everyone began talking as if to no one, what would they say? Her mother? Her father? Her brothers and sisters? Maximilian and Emily? She employed the grown-up tactic of redirection. “Do you teach that book—Ariel?”