The morning was bracing outside. She pulled a knit turtleneck and a black beret from her knapsack and slipped them on. The streets lay mostly empty. A man was hosing the pavement on West Fourth Street and Greene. A few early commuters hustled toward Broadway. She liked the early mornings in downtown Manhattan. When she and Russell were first dating, they used to cycle to Central Park in the dawn during migration season to see what the wind had brought in the night before. Sometimes in the evenings, they rode to the top of the Empire State Building and watched the migrants passing in the lights from the observation deck. No one even knew the birds were up there. It was their own small secret, listening to the migrants overhead, so close you could hear their flight calls and identify the species in the dark.

On First Avenue she stopped for a quart of milk at the Korean market. The Mexican was clipping tea roses; they nodded to each other (he too had his radio on, his tuned to sports). Upstairs, the loft was overheated; the sun fell through caged windows, the answering machine blinked; it was probably Russell calling from his hotel in Amsterdam.

She set the milk on the kitchen counter, the knapsack on the floor, and tossed her beret on the table. She opened the roof door to let in some air, and the sound of traffic poured in from First Avenue. There were two hang-ups on the machine. Then a third hang-up. Then Yvonne leaving a message, her voice taut and urgent.

Ana, where are you? Call me when you get this. It’s Yvonne.

The fifth message was Yvonne again.

Ana, I need you to call…Okay?

She waited for the next message, but there was none. Russell hadn’t phoned. How strange of him not to. Perhaps he’d tried her in the lab? And why was Yvonne so insistent, so dramatic?

She took the portable out to the rooftop. Horns blared in the street. She was sure Russell would call any moment. He had his paper to deliver at the conference. He’d practiced it just the other night. A paper on the necessity of updating museum collections for DNA and systematics studies. He’d read it to her in the kitchen, standing by the sink, she in a chair. Don’t move your leg so, she said. My leg will be behind a lectern, he said. Well, what if it’s not? Then it moves, he said, don’t worry about my leg. But Ana did worry, not only about his leg but about the entire trip. After Amsterdam he was traveling to Leiden for a few days, then to visit his mother in East Anglia. His lecture was that very evening.