The room is filling up now, the hubbub around the coffee table increasing, the crowd of actors spilling out into the room. The assistant stage manager is clapping her hands and gathering everyone together. Lissa and the young man, who tells her his name is Michael, wander over to the circle, where she takes her seat beside the older actor, who acknowledges her with a slight nod of the head.

All of the chairs are taken. Klara makes her way to her place but stays standing, her gaze sweeping the circle as one by one her actors fall silent. She lets the silence swell until it fills the room, then touches her hand to her heart. “Here you are,” she says. “Here you all are. And who are you? Tell us. Johnny.” She nods to the man beside Lissa. “You begin.”

“Johnny, Vanya.”

A young, intense-looking woman in black jeans and a polo speaks next. “Helen, Sonya.”

One by one they speak—Richard, Serebryakov; Greg, Astrov—and as they do so, the play populates itself: the elegant older woman playing Maria, Yelena’s mother-in-law; the woman who looks to be in her seventies playing Marina the nurse. Lissa watches Klara watch her actors—they all watch each other with wariness, with excitement, until the circle is complete and it is Lissa’s turn. “Lissa,” she says, “Yelena.”

“So,” Klara says, “let us read this brilliant play.”

As Johnny bends to the black leather bag at his feet and fishes out his script, it comes to Lissa, where she knows him from—the call center. She can picture him there now, sitting in the filthy break room with the same faintly disdainful look on his face. Something regal about him. Something tragic. Dressed all in black, with the same black leather briefcase at his feet.

Hannah

THEY HAVE BEEN TOLD TO REPORT TO THE HOSPITAL EARLY, AND she and Nathan sit silently, side by side on hard plastic chairs nailed to the floor, as dawn breaks over London.

Nathan scrolls through work emails on his phone as Hannah counts the couples. Seven of them. She knows the statistics: 24 percent of those in her age bracket will conceive, 15 percent of those older than her, slightly higher for those under thirty-five. She watches faces, guesses ages, tries to do the math. How many of those sitting here will be lucky? One couple? Two?

The women’s names are called and they stand, their small bags in their hands, saying good-bye to their partners. Nathan stands before Hannah and presses his forehead against hers.