Luba, a beauty, was looking terrible—her auburn hair newly released from a plastic headdress but soaking all the same, her open coat revealing a succession of sweaters, her sleep-flattened face not made up. “Tuesday mornings are worse than Mondays, I tell you why. Mondays you’re still fresh from the weekend. Wednesday you already look forward to Friday. But Tuesdays—Ismet, I tell you, Tuesdays are No Man’s Land.” Now she had her boots off but still sat on the edge of the chair, holding each boot up by its top. Her accent thickened when she got emotional, which was a good deal of the time. “What a morning. An hour to get here. What a country.” She rolled her eyes toward the gray window. “Did you see the television last night? Not one thing worth seeing. I watched till midnight. I told my husband, What decadence.”

Go away, Ismet was saying, in his mind and his own language. Go away.

“What would I give to go away. Now the pension can be drawn at fifty-five, I count to myself, how many years. Still so many.” Luba put her hand to her lank hair and repeated quickly, “So very many.”

“Jaspersen’s going to the Committee this morning.” Ismet drew attention to the work on his desk. “I have to prepare—”

“Jaspersen’s going down? What’s being discussed?”

“Item Six. The Question of Unification.” Ismet again pointed to the papers on his blotter. The Question of Unification came up annually. Countries had been divided, subdivided. Some pleaded to be put back, others demanded guarantees that it would never happen.

Ismet’s phone rang. He snatched it up without looking to see if his secretary had arrived at her desk by the coat-rack. “Contingency Section, Ismet.” Before anyone spoke, he gave Luba an apologetic nod over the mouthpiece, denoting a long conversation. “Ah—Mr. Nagashima, yes, I called you yesterday evening but you’d already gone.… No, no, of course, it was well after hours, I was working late and didn’t keep track of the … Yes, the Question of Unification. I think you have a false docket from the main file.”

Luba stood up, still holding a boot in each hand. “That Nagashima loses things,” she said. “Once, a whole set of working-papers.”

Ismet said into the phone, “When you find it, then, perhaps you’d call me.”

Luba nodded. “Another time, a folder of MOVs.” These were Miscellaneous Obligating Vouchers.

“Let us lunch some time,” said Ismet, prolonging the telephone conversation in the hope that Luba would leave. “Yes. Thursday would be fine.” He turned the pages of his desk calendar with his left hand and found the day blank. However, since Luba now did leave, he said into the phone, “Sorry, I do have something—another day perhaps. Let’s be in touch when you find the file then.” He replaced the receiver quietly and lifted the uppermost folder from his tray.