At first Ove thinks of saying no, but then realizes they’ll never get out of here at this rate. Instead, he spreads so many newspapers over the passenger seat and floor that it’s as if he’s preparing to give the car a respray.

“Just hop in, will you, so we can get home,” he groans and gestures at Jimmy.

Jimmy nods, upbeat. His cell phone plings.

“And stop that noise—this isn’t a bloody pinball arcade.”

“Sorry, man, work keeps e-mailing me all the time,” says Jimmy, balancing his food in one hand and fiddling with the phone in his pocket with the other.

“So you have a job, then?” says Ove.

Jimmy nods enthusiastically.

“I program iPhone apps.”

Ove has no further questions.

At least it’s relatively quiet in the car for ten minutes until they roll into the parking area outside Ove’s garage. Ove stops alongside the bicycle shed, puts the Saab into neutral without turning off the engine, and gives his passengers a meaningful look.

“It’s fine, Ove. Patrick can manage on his crutches from here,” says Parvaneh with unmistakable irony.

“Cars aren’t allowed in the residential area,” says Ove.

Undeterred, Patrick extricates himself and his cast from the backseat of the car, while Jimmy squeezes out of the passenger seat, chicken grease all over his T-shirt.

Parvaneh lifts out the three-year-old in her car seat and puts it on the ground. The girl waves something in the air, while yelling out some garbled words.

Parvaneh nods, goes back to the car, leans in through the front door, and gives Ove a sheet of paper.

“What’s that?” Ove asks, making not the slightest movement to accept it.

“It’s Nasanin’s drawing.”

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“She’s drawn you,” Parvaneh replies, and shoves it into his hands.

Ove gives the paper a reluctant look. It’s filled with lines and swirls.

“That’s Jimmy, and that’s the cat, and that’s Patrick and me. And that’s you,” explains Parvaneh.

When she says that last bit she points at a figure in the middle of the drawing. Everything else on the paper is drawn in black, but the figure in the middle is a veritable explosion of color. A riot of yellow and red and blue and green and orange and purple.

“You’re the funniest thing she knows. That’s why she always draws you in color,” says Parvaneh.

Then she closes the passenger door and walks off.

It takes several seconds before Ove collects himself enough to call out after her: “What do you mean, ‘always’?”

But by then they have all started walking back to the houses.