Old Man, the other day I talked to a neighbor about you. He has brought, to show her, what he calls a treasure: a French ornithological treatise from the early twentieth century, its pages eaten away—it’s like lace, he says, caressing the edges—and with beautiful full-color illustrations of perroquets and cygnes. A fortune, he’d told her when he arrived—it cost him a fortune!—but even so he had to buy it, he’d found it at a used bookstore buried under a bunch of worthless books—a shame, a shame, it needed to be rescued! Are you listening to me?, insists Soon, arms crossed, chin down. Old Man looks up, thinks about the words she has said. Why?, he asks. What do you mean, why? A different question would have been more logical, for example about what?, what was it that she’d said about him, but why? You told me you didn’t have any friends, says Old Man, still distracted, stealthily turning the pages of his treatise. She’s not a friend, replies Soon, I told you, she’s a neighbor. A neighbor my age, she specifies. And why did you talk to her about me?, he repeats, with real disinterest. Gnawing at her fingernails, Soon doesn’t know how to go on. She wanted to know what her neighbor thought. Old Man puts down the treatise, sets it gently aside, and looks at her—finally—with attention. What she thinks about what? Soon tears up blades of grass and shreds them between her fingers as she speaks. What she thinks of us being friends, of you coming here every day to see me, of you helping me skip school and all that. I help you skip school? No, it’s not exactly help, stammers Soon, it’s more that you don’t judge me and you help me figure out what to do, like not responding to the request for documentation, for example. And what does she think about me, this neighbor of yours?, asks Old Man. She advised me to ask you directly. Ask me what? If you would be here with any other girl, or if it’s only me. I don’t understand, he says. If what you need is someone to talk to, about your birds and about Nina Simone and those things of yours, some company that any other person could also give you—a boy, a girl, a man, or a woman—or if it’s me in particular, because of something I have and you like. Of course it’s you, I don’t stop to talk to the park workers or the woman who sells me my buns every day, I come here for you! But why?, Soon wants to know, and now she’s the one who is asking why. Is there something about her that he likes? Something that makes him come back day after day? Something she has now or that he hopes to get from her someday? She feels in a hurry to get somewhere, to reach some conclusion, and Old Man is not making it easy. Men like young girls, isn’t that right? She looks down, ashamed. Is that what’s happening between them? No, no, no … Old Man screws up his face. No, he repeats, he swears to her, it’s not that, she shouldn’t be afraid! Who has made her think like that? Did her neighbor put those thoughts in her head? Hadn’t they agreed they’d met in another life and that’s why they’ve recognized each other?