And so Nadia dealt with these six every day, learning their ways as they made their way through item after item on their daily agendas. From the important to the trivial, the abstract to the personal— everything seemed to Nadia part of a fabric, where everything connected to everything. Not only was the council not part-time work, it ate up the entirety of every waking day. It consumed her life. And yet at this point she had only gotten through two months of a three-m-year term.

• • •

Art could see that it was getting to her, and he did what he could to help. He came up to her apartment every morning with breakfast, like room service. Often he had cooked it himself, and always it was good. As he came in, platter held aloft, he called up jazz on her Al to serve as the soundtrack of their morning together— not just Nadia’s beloved Louis, though he sought out odd recordings by Satch to amuse her, things like “Give Peace a Chance” or “Stardust Memories”— but also later styles of jazz that she had never liked before, because they were so frenetic; but that seemed to be the tempo of these days. Whatever the reason, Charlie Parker now skittered and zoomed around most impressively, she thought, and Charles Mingus made his big band sound like Duke Ellington’s on pandorph, which was just what Ellington and all the rest of swing needed, in her opinion— very funny, lovely music. And best of all, on many mornings Art called up Clifford Brown, a discovery Art had made during his investigations on her behalf, one he was very proud of, and advocated constantly to her as the logical successor to Armstrong— a vibrant trumpet sound joyous and positive and melodic like Satch, and also brilliantly fast and clever and difficult— like Parker, only happy. It was the perfect soundtrack for these wild times, driving and intense but as positive as one could be.

So Art would bring in breakfasts, singing “All of Me” in a pretty good voice, and with Satchmo’s basic insight that American song lyrics could only be treated as silly jokes: “All of me, why not take all of me, Can’t you see, I’m no good without you.” And call up some music, and sit with his back to the window; and the mornings were fun.

But no matter how well the days began, the council was eating her life. Nadia got more and more sick of it— the bickering, negotiating, compromising, conciliating— the dealing with people, minute after minute. She was beginning to hate it.