“Tokyo. They’re sixteen hours ahead of us, so I can only really call him in the evenings, which is the next morning for him. If I call him in the morning here, it’s the middle of the night there, and that took me a minute to get on top of. But now that I’m completely used to it and can finally calculate the time zones without a piece of paper, he’s coming home.”

“To visit?”

“To stay, I hope.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s in finance, sadly.”

Laura looked curiously at her. “Why sadly?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Maggie, waving at someone across the street. She raised her voice. “Did it all work out with the cabbages?”

“Yes,” called back the woman, also raising her voice for this strange exchange of vegetable news. “We needed twelve in the end, so we were both wrong.”

“Wow,” called Maggie, then turned back to Laura. “That’s a lot of cabbages. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with money, I guess. I thought Asher was going to be something more . . . interesting.” She looked quickly at Laura. “That sounds wrong, it’s fine that he’s a businessman . . .” She tailed off.

Laura wasn’t quite sure what to say here. Was Maggie genuinely sad her son was successful? “What did you think he was going to be?”

“A musician.”

Herbert needed to do his more serious business and was trying to go behind a tree, so they stopped. Laura said, “But presumably he can be a businessman and a musician, it’s not like those two are mutually exclusive.”

“Sure,” said Maggie, keeping half an eye on the dog, “but when Asher was young, he was full of creativity and fun, and then he went to college and came back all grown up and much less amusing. Then he got his heart broken and ran away to Japan to recover.” She looked cross suddenly.

They resumed their walk, and every so often Maggie waved at other people, presumably neighbors and old friends. It reminded Laura of crossing the Columbia campus with either of her parents; students and other professors would continuously stop and chat, or simply launch into complicated questions that made no sense to anyone but her mom or dad. Maggie was more casual than that, waving or saying hi, but it was clear she was plugged into Hancock Park as firmly as Laura’s family was into the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Little tiny countries, with little tiny populations and even tinier politics.

They turned back toward home, and Maggie changed the subject again. “So, are you settling in? Do you need anything?”

Laura shook her head. “No, thanks, I’m good. I need to find a job, but something that’ll work around school.” She paused. “I should get my class schedule soon, which will make it easier.”