“Sorry,” he said, stepping aside. His name, he offered, was Sebastian Kent. Something—bicycle grease?—dotted the tanned skin beneath the burnished hairs of one forearm. She opened the mailbox and took out the schedule of talks for the first two days, a notice about a cocktail party, and a postcard, identical to the one she’d received last August, from the man in Chicago she’d been seeing for several years but wasn’t serious about. (That’s how long ago this was: no Web, no email, no cell phones. Veterans brought rolls of change for the telephone booths.)

“Could you,” Sebastian echoed as she turned, “show me how to work this?”

She’d met Dee in just this way; during their first visit, their mailboxes, like their airless rooms, had been adjacent. Each box bore two rickety dials, meant to be spun to etched letters and numbers now so worn they were almost unreadable. Someone had shown Dee, who in turn had shown Rosalind, the trick of guessing the right positions and releasing the latch. Now Rosalind passed this on to Sebastian, who bent close to her face as he followed her movements.

“Pretty shirt,” he said as he straightened up, gesturing toward the garment she’d carefully chosen to look careless.

“It’s old,” she said (it had been her sister’s: but she’d lost her sister, a story no one knew but Dee). Surprised by the flush rising warmly up her neck, she turned to hide her confusion before adding (where was Dee?), “You should check your box a few times a day—it’s how the organizers find us.”

A fat bumblebee carried into the lobby a shard of the human buzz that continued to rise on the porch. Then the crowd followed the bumblebee, into the lobby and out the back door, all headed toward the large meeting room and the first of many talks. Dee found Rosalind in time for them to sit together.