On the train they sat side by side, passing soft fields that leaned and shook as if water were pouring across them. Where the grain had been cut a sharp stubble remained, glinting like broken glass in the sunlight. Pietro’s clothes were clean but smudged, as if he owned few outfits and wore them often. Despite his physical slightness, there was a strength about him.

“I did,” she said in a dreamy, distant voice. “But it’s over now.”

“Is good you go to your sister,” Pietro said.

Phoebe nodded her agreement. She was floating like the priest, suspended in warm liquid.

“When you can go?” he persisted. “Maybe today. Perhaps we walk together to the station. You have there your bag?”

Phoebe turned, looking him full in the face. “I lied to you,” she said. “My sister is dead.”

She caught a faint reflexive action somewhere in Pietro’s eyes, an infinitesimal quickening. “You are alone?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling, for something had opened, the world was flooding inside her.

“We go outside, Phoebe,” Pietro said, standing, taking her by the hand. “Soon I take the train, I have already my ticket, but we must speak.”

Dear Mom, Phoebe and Barry, My French is the worst but luckily we have a friend who translates. Everyone in Paris keeps talking about the demonstrations of two years ago when they tore up cobblestones from the roads and threw them at the cops and they built barricades like the French Revolution. The whole country went on strike for a couple of weeks literally no one worked or studied they just wandered through the streets talking to each other. Nobody locked their doors people slept in strangers’ houses and fell in love and pulled the hands off the clocks outside because time was stopped. (Remember Mom?) Everyone says how it was the most incredible time of their life and how depressing it was when the whole thing finally ended and they were just students again, supposed to take exams and get jobs and all that. Some people say they almost wish it never happened so they wouldn’t know how things could be and they’d still be happy. Love, Faith

Dear Mom and Phoebe and Barry, Yesterday at a chateaux outside Paris Wolf and I jumped over those velvet ropes that block off where you aren’t supposed to go. And we walked through the rooms nobody ever sees they were so beautiful and quiet with silk furniture and little glass things you could pick up. We pretended like we really lived there and lay down on a canopy bed with carved posts but maybe some kind of silent alarm bell went off because a guard came running in and totally freaked and we got thrown out but still it was worth it (Wolf doesn’t think so). But sometimes I think those velvet ropes are all over the world you just cant see them. In Paris I keep thinking where is the best most intense part of Paris, where is the absolute center of Paris and I cant exactly tell, I’m stuck outside the velvet ropes and I just hate them, it makes me so furious when all I ever see is the same normal stuff everybody sees. I wish I could climb over like in the chateaux but the problem is, in Paris unlike a museum the ropes are invisible, you cant tell which way is in which way is out. So you just keep trying. Love, Faith.

Phoebe sensed from Wolf’s expression that she’d given something away, that he saw her differently now. But her impression of Wolf had shifted, too; he was a man who had nearly recovered from something. His diminished size seemed part of this evolution, as if growing older had been, for Wolf, a matter of scaling back.

“How come you never went home?” Phoebe said.

He took a long breath, drawing a cigarette from his pack but not lighting it. “I couldn’t,” he said. “Start up again, like nothing happened? How could I do that?” His face looked bare, stripped of something. “So I waited,” he said. “Years kept passing. This ended up being my life.”

Phoebe noticed Wolf looking at her often now, as if his wonderment at her presence had sharpened with the hours. “Goddamn, this life is strange,” he said when they reached the street where his building stood.

“But good,” Phoebe said. “Right?”

Overhead, the white trees spilled their blossoms heedlessly, like artificial snow.

“Do you think you used to be arrogant?” Phoebe asked.

Wolf laughed. “Probably,” he said. “Did I seem it?”

“I’m not sure.”

Wolf grew thoughtful. “When I think of that time,” he said, “what I remember most was feeling like nothing could ever go wrong for me.” He turned to Phoebe with a hard smile. “That’s arrogance.”

“So how does irony fit in with that?” she said.

Wolf smiled again. “Blows it to pieces.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I was in love with her,” Wolf said. “Crazy about her, absolutely crazy. I don’t expect I’ll ever, ever feel that way about someone again. Jesus God, I hope not.”

He squatted at the water’s edge. Phoebe sat hunched on the grass, chin on her knees. “What about Carla?” she said.

“It’s night and day,” Wolf said with feeling. “You can be in love and still have a life, you know? You can build something. Faith and I were like thieves. Nothing belonged to us, it was one long spree.” After a moment he said, “On the other hand, we were kids.”

And seeing no way out of it, he leapt in ahead, like diving through a sheet of glass, such a terrible, crushing cold, but he beat her in at least, though Faith was right behind him. Wolf thought he would die for sure but he kept on swimming, he’d be damned if he was going to look like a coward in front of this freshman, this prissy little girl, Jesus Christ. So with the teeth knocking in his head, he kept going, straight out. Sharks, he hadn’t even thought about sharks—after all, this was the fucking ocean. But some distance out a funny thing started to happen: the cold water began to feel almost hot, literally kind of tropical, warming his limbs; it felt pretty good, he had to admit, and on top of that there was this weird power, being out there in that gray heartless sea—as if you’d crossed over to a place most people didn’t know existed. Faith swam near him. Wolf had the impression some of that heat he felt was coming from behind her skin, and he reached out, touching her—just did it—they kissed right there in the water, so easy, as if they knew each other when all they’d done was say five words and jump in the freezing sea. When Faith looked back at the empty beach, she was smiling. Wolf had never seen her really smile before; it shook on her face she was so cold, and he wanted to get her back onshore. Around school he was pretty used to calling the shots, being a senior, having the truck and all, but as he breathed the cold salt air and the wind beat his head, Wolf had a feeling those days were probably over and he didn’t mind, really. He was actually kind of glad.

Phoebe went to the window. Yellow light from the kitchen smeared the dark glass. She heard their laughter, the tinny sound of a radio, and it seemed to Phoebe that her sister’s life was entirely effaced, a shadow beside the vivid presence of Carla. Wolf’s fiancée reminded her of girls in high school who’d worn their boyfriends’ athletic jackets to smoke cigarettes outside on foggy days, sleeves reaching halfway down their slim, manicured fingers. They had seemed to Phoebe so dazzlingly complete, lockets tangled in their turtlenecks, a dozen rings, jade, turquoise; girls who didn’t hesitate, whose very thoughtlessness she longed to copy.