In the pickup zone outside Dulles airport, I was lifted off the ground and given a midair kiss that had more pressure behind it than passion. When Robin was nervous, he went in for theatrical gestures. We stood apart, breathing white shapes into the cold air. He clapped his gloved hands together. So surprising was it to be on the ground in the presence of Robin, large as life and all in one piece, that it took me a moment to notice the beard, an elfish goatee grayer than his hair.

“Very cute,” I said.

“Cute? I was aiming a bit higher than cute.”

“Dashing, then. Mysterious.”

Robin loaded my bags and slammed the trunk and we got in. “Turns out,” he said, starting the engine, “the line between stylish and homeless is a thin one. I see people staring at me: Is this urban chic, or is it that living in your car makes it hard to shave?”

I laughed in the old way. “Do I have a say in it?”

“I thought you’d like a change.”

“No, I like it. I do.”

“The thing about facial hair,” said Robin, “it’s zero commitment. It can go at any time.” Easily he laid his hand on my knee. “Feels like just yesterday I was seeing you off.”

“I know.”

“And it feels like it’s been years.”

“I know.”

He took his hand back to change lanes. The freeway signs wheeled past, Bethesda, Baltimore, white letters on green, the places we had to circle around to get home. His eyes never stopped moving, making their private, minute-to-minute decisions. Inside the ring of beard, his lips were fuller and more self-possessed. Why had a beard never occurred to me before? He looked like a very good likeness of Robin. No matter how close you get to someone, the deep strangeness of the other person is always there, waiting to rush in.

We were off the freeway, heading south toward Silver Spring. The lights of a winter evening wheeled past: streetlights, porch lights, flashing lights, green and pink neon lights: big, human versions of what I’d seen from the air.

“It hasn’t snowed yet,” I said.

“It’s been cold enough. Freezing or below freezing for a week.”

“If it rained, it would snow.”

“That’s one way of putting it, Ducks.”

I allowed ten seconds of silence. “Robin, would you mind not calling me that?”

“Why not?”

“I’ve never liked it much. Sorry. Nothing against Cincinnati. It’s bizarre,” I said, eyes on the road, “changing worlds like this. Air travel has a lot to answer for.”

He shot me a sympathetic glance; he was not one to take offense. “Did you ever stop to think that before the steam train, no one had traveled faster than on the back of a horse?”