That week, Liz Norton's home phone rang three or four times every afternoon and her cell phone rang two or three times every morning. The calls were from Pelletier and Espinoza, and although both produced elaborate Archimboldian pretexts, the pretexts were exhausted in a minute and the two professors proceeded to say what was really on their minds.

Pelletier talked about his colleagues in the German department, about a young Swiss poet and professor who was badgering him for a scholarship, about the sky in Paris (shades of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Banville), about the cars at dusk, their lights already on, heading home. Espinoza talked about his library, where he arranged his books in the strictest solitude, about the distant drums that he sometimes heard coming from a neighboring apartment that seemed to be home to a group of African musicians, about the neighborhoods of Madrid, Lavapies, Malasana, and about the area around the Gran Via, where you could go for a walk at any time of night.