Hafiz was a chemist, Pars continued. But also one of the great Persian poets. In the gardens around his tomb in Shiraz, he told her, there used to be an old man who carried an enormous diwan of his poems. The old man had a piece of cardboard with hundreds of numbers painted on it, and a cockatiel that always perched on his shoulder. You paid him a coin and he let the bird land on a number on the cardboard—and that was the number of your poem. He’d open the great book and read it to you, and there was your fortune. In our house, Pars said, we simply flipped the book and read whatever page we’d opened to.

Interesting, Ana said.

She studied the book. Pars sipped from his glass.

Do I have to do it now? she asked.

No. Pars shook his head. You don’t have to do it all. It’s the poems. They’re what’s important.

She set the book aside and thanked him and picked up her tea. Pars blew on his glass. They sat together in silence, the tea sending steam into the afternoon, one helix from his glass, another from her cup. Even though the sun was still out, a few snow flurries began drifting across the roof.

Pars stayed for three days. He slept on a spare futon the first night. The second night, they slept in the same bed, fully clothed, as they had on the island. She took him on the subway, showed him the Empire State Building, the Museum of Modern Art. He wanted to see Coney Island because of the Ferlinghetti poem; and they rode out on the F train and walked through the shuttered park as rain fell on the board-walk and over the Cyclone and out at sea. Why, she wondered aloud, were they always ending up at the ocean?

Afterward, on the ride back, the streets fled past: Avenue X and Y, the entire alphabet slick with rain. She fell asleep against his shoulder, as she had the first afternoon on the bus on Trachis Island; yet this time it was different, though she couldn’t say how.

She woke once underground, Pars tapping her shoulder.

Do we need to get off sometime soon? he inquired.

No, she said. They were only at Jay Street–Borough Hall. She closed her eyes again. They had four more stops to go.