Again Margaret looked contemplative for a few moments.

“I think you’ve uncovered something that I was having trouble understanding. She hates her name, and then she tells you she wishes she had one. I can’t decipher it.”

Balzac leaned over the table and rested his hand on Margaret’s. “You must tell me what you are really thinking, madame.”

“I am really thinking you should take your hand off mine,” said Margaret mildly. “That may work with the women of France, but uninvited intimacies do not work well with me.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“And I did tell you what I really thought,” said Margaret.

“But that is not true,” said Balzac.

Calvin almost laughed out loud, to hear him front her so bold.

“Is it not?” asked Margaret. “If so, I am not aware of what the truth might be.”

“You got a look in your eyes. Very thoughtful. Then you reached a conclusion. And yet you told me that you can’t decipher this girl’s wish for a name.”

“I said I can’t decipher it,” said Margaret. “I meant that I can’t find her real name.”

“Ah. So that means you have deciphered something.”

“I’ve never thought to look for this before. But it seems that the two names I had for her—the name her mother called her, which was awful, and her household name, which is hardly better; they call her ‘Fishy’—neither of those is her true name. But she thinks they are. Or rather, she knows of no other name, and yet she knows there must be another name, and so she wishes for that true name, and—well, as you can see, I haven’t deciphered anything.”

“Your decipherment is not up to your own standard of understanding maybe,” said Balzac, “but it is enough to leave me breathless.”

On they blathered, Balzac and Mrs. Smith, trading compliments. Calvin thought about names. About how much easier his life might have been if his own name had not been shared with Alvin, save one letter. About how Alvin resisted using the name Maker even though he had earned it. Alvin Smith indeed. And then Margaret—why did she decide to stop being Peggy? What pretension was she nursing? Or was Margaret the true name and Peggy the disguise?

Chatter chatter. Oh, shut up, both of you. “Here’s a question,” Calvin asked, interrupting them. “Which comes first, the name or the soul?”

“What do you mean?” asked Balzac.

“I mean is the soul the same, no matter what you name it? Or if you change names do you change souls?”

“What do names have to do with...” Margaret’s voice trailed off. She looked off into the distance.

“I think decipherment happens before our eyes,” said Balzac.

Calvin was annoyed. She wasn’t supposed to take this seriously. “I just asked a question, I wasn’t trying to plumb the secrets of the universe.”

Margaret looked at him with disinterest. “You were going to make some foolish joke about giving Alvin the C from your name and you could be the one that everybody likes.”