The train that Jake took to Leora’s parents’ house that day was almost empty. Jake, one of the few people in the greater metropolitan area who neither watches the news on TV nor consults any newsy Web sites nor reads the newspaper, failed to notice the warnings for the hurricane arriving that afternoon, predicted to be the worst hurricane to attack the area within the past fifteen years. Jake often suspects that he experiences life quite differently from those around him. Every day as he walks around the city, he sees people with cellular phones welded to their ears and little electronic organizers in their hands. People are always setting a time to meet someone, plotting their course of action for the next fifteen hours, deciding how much money they will need to retire. Jake has no problem with technology. Contrary to what his father accuses him of, he doesn’t live in the past. It’s just that he lives in the present while everyone around him lives in the future.

Living in the future wouldn’t have helped anyone this time, though. A hurricane is one of the few things left on earth that no one can do anything about. And so Jake enjoys the moment, the ruffled sounds of rain making him feel all the more dry and warm and safe inside Leora’s parents’ basement as he places the dolls in their positions. On the top floor, in one of the bedrooms, he sets up the miniature easel with the light panel, onto which he has glued a slide of Jan Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter. Beside it, he stands the doll who looks the most like Leora, fixing a palette and paintbrush in her hand. On top of the doll’s head, like a crown, he places the diamond ring.

ON THE EVENING Frances and Joe went to their cousin’s wedding, Nadav had spent the previous eight hours, as usual, at the “job” Frances had given him, standing behind the counter in her candy store with its blazing awnings screaming the store’s name: “Columbus Candies.”