It’s their routine now to share some junk food, a soft drink. Old Man only talks about birds or Nina Simone, he pronounces names in Latin—scientific names, he says, like Turdus merula, Sturnus unicolor, and Apus apus—or in other languages—Miriam Makeba, Simone Signoret, Nelson Mandela. He lets her use his binoculars to look at the sky, and he teaches her to identify the birds that fly overhead, from the meek and dreary sparrows to the distinguished western yellow wagtail. He’s brought her ornithological magazines and a hardcover beginner’s guide, and he also lends her his phone so she can listen to more Nina Simone songs and look at photographs of her: Nina thoughtful, smoking, a colorful turban on her head; Nina in profile with huge silver hoop earrings; Nina with her little Lisa, both with their hair styled in complicated, braided updos; Nina at the piano and Nina singing; Nina young and Nina old; Nina with sequins in her eyebrows and eyelashes; the Nina of joyfully intense eyes, and Nina of the tortured gaze. By now he’s told her Nina’s entire life, from childhood to death. Though he repeats himself a lot and almost always bores her, Soon doesn’t want to interrupt him because he interrupts himself, unexpectedly, when he realizes that he’s being annoying. Soon, you have to tell me, he begs her very seriously and sadly, I don’t want to be a pain, the worst thing in the world is to be a pain!, but it’s true, thinks Soon, that he is a bit of a pain, even if he’s also funny, not because of what he says but his way of saying it: his quick movements, his twinkling eyes, the way he runs his hand through his hair and leaves it sticking straight up, crazily. Let me clean your glasses, Old Man, she tells him, and she does it meticulously, glancing surreptitiously at his naked face, his faded blue eyes bigger and more vulnerable without the lenses, his droopy eyelids slightly swollen, purplish. He never asks about her life, doesn’t pressure her to tell him anything, and he leaves as abruptly as he arrives, a little hasty and embarrassed. She is grateful for Old Man’s discretion, his way of situating himself at her level and not prying, so unlike other adults. Still, she kind of wishes he would take an interest in her, show some curiosity about her life beyond the border of the hideout. Maybe because of that, without any goal in mind, she starts to make things up, to lie, and she tells him she knows how to do a ton of things that she doesn’t: skate, dance, play the violin, speak French. In summers, she says, her parents rent a huge house right on the beach, huge and unkempt, and their life there is also unkempt, with crowds of visitors who show up without calling first and leave without warning. Her parents give her a lot of freedom, she can come and go and they don’t ask questions, she can get up at whatever time she wants—or not get up at all—eat whatever she feels like—or not eat at all. At night she’s allowed to sit with the grown-ups, and once in a while they even let her drink a glass of wine or champagne. Her father is a very celebrated doctor and her mother is a theater actress; they both have sophisticated and extravagant friends. One of those friends, a man in his thirties, tried to seduce her one morning at dawn. She firmly refused and he understood; he did the math and promised to wait five years until she came of age. For winter vacation, when they can’t go to the beach house—it’s an inhospitable, wind-swept coast—they pack their bags and travel the world. Turkey, Taiwan, India, Japan … destinations always as far-flung as they are exotic.