Ana lay down on her back. The lawn was still warm from the day. Pars lay next to her; she could hear his breath nearby. Claartija sat on the opposite side, and Claartija’s boyfriend beside her. Kevin stood fooling with the knobs of his telescope, trying to get a smaller image of the moon. After all that time of his wanting the telescope, Douglas had finally gotten him one a few years earlier. Yet Kevin never really took to the instrument and never found anything more than Mars and Venus. He preferred his focus on the earth, at his feet, on his plants. He left the constellations to Douglas.

Oscar wandered over and stood panting above them. He leaned down and licked Claartija’s boyfriend on the face.

Jesus! he screamed.

What?

The dog, he surprised me.

He’s just saying hello, Claartija said. Go away, Oscar.

She reached up and rubbed his chest, then pushed him gently aside.

Pars kept very still. Through his binoculars, the moon was amazingly bright, a white sheet that shivered each time he inhaled.

I see a big crater, he announced.

Does it have rays emanating from it? Ana asked.

Yes, he said, it does.

That’s Tycho, Ana said. When you do this officially, she explained, you use Tycho as a reference for the size of the bird and the direction it’s flying.

We’re not official, are we? Pars asked.

God, I should hope not, Kevin muttered.

They grew quiet. They all watched. They all waited, eyes to lenses. The crickets had started again in the grass. The wind blew from the north. Ana knew: the smallest songbird could be detected at a distance of two kilometers, flying across the face of the moon. Through the binoculars, the bird appears the size of a period at the end of a sentence: a small fleck, hardly noticeable, a shutter opening and closing too fast even to register. But if you took the time and were still enough, and your eyes were completely open, you’d see it. As Ana did just then. Her first bird of the night.

I got one, she said, her voice muted behind the binoculars.

This is impossible, Claartija moaned.

Keep looking, Douglas encouraged.

Pars, who’d been holding his breath for almost a full minute now, saw something flash across the moon.

I think I saw one.

Good, Ana said.

I’m not sure, though, he added.