“Water, please.” I pretended to look around. “Nice house.” Though I don’t like split-levels. They remind me of a doll’s house where everything is in view.

“It’s my dad’s place. He’s at work.”

“Lucky you.” I had met Jack’s father when we were young and they lived in their other house, predivorce. Tall, talkative, nice is all I remember.

Jack went to the fridge and I took a seat at the breakfast bar. On the counter a laptop was open to a website, Tar Sands Action 2011, next to a stack of books and a DVD. Did that mean I was to be dealt with quickly and ushered out?

This kitchen didn’t even have a door on it. Anyone could see us from the landing or through the windows that started half a floor below. My eyes kept flitting down to the front door, expecting a lordly version of Jack to charge in at any moment to see what his son was getting up to.

He was taking his time by the fridge, his back to me, head tipped down. Enough thick brown hair for both of us. Judging by the bony, stretched-out look of him, Jack had grown tall a little too fast.

In fourth grade he used to come over to my house and we’d cut out constellations from National Geographic and prick the pages to make light-box planetariums. Back then he was a pigeon-toed kid with a buzz cut. We went on our bikes to the new subdivision at Sligo Creek. The creek had been drained to build the houses, but water came up anyway in all the ditches. We brought pollywogs home in pails. Some of them grew tiny back legs. Some even grew front legs, but we never got as far as a real toad. Jack said the pollywogs couldn’t grow up because they had been taken out of their natural environment. I said I didn’t think a stinking hole on a construction site was very natural. Jack said it was more natural than a pail.

Hiss of a bottle cap.

Don’t turn around yet . . .

Second hiss.

I whipped off my beret. When Jack faced me again, a glass in each hand, I was there with my naked head out in plain sight.

It is a blink reaction people cannot help. I was prepared for his surprised look. I had planned to get some satisfaction from it. What I was not prepared for was the expression that immediately took its place: This is curious. But: It is what it is. And: No huge deal. Maybe it is the look of someone with a scientific turn of mind. Miss Sedge has a very similar expression. If you believe everything is part of the world, then everything is equally astonishing, so nothing by itself can be too astonishing.

“Beer?” He held one out, looking proud to have prepared me a stronger option.