After way too long replaying the sound of Oscar’s words—I like you—low, clear, direct—I got up and bought myself a pretzel from a cart. As I sat down to eat it, a park squirrel came to join me, scrawny, a section of tail-fur missing. He perched next to me on the bench and stared.

If you give them food, you’re making them bold, which isn’t safe for them—they could get hurt—but the thing was, it felt off to be alone right now, like an omen of things to come. I needed to share this meal with somebody, even just symbolically, so I tore off a chunk and handed it over. I’d fully expected him to scamper away, shouting “Sucker!” in his squirrel-tut language, but he stayed put. We sat eating our pretzels together, two city-dwellers with nowhere to be, nothing to do but sustain ourselves with park food and stare at strangers.

This was easy. I understood this interaction. Maybe I could get a pet. Mom’s allergies didn’t matter anymore.

A dude raced past on a bike, blasting eighties music out of a built-in speaker. The squirrel stood and fled into the greenery behind me.

I finished the pretzel alone.

6.

i was drafting a Very Important Action Item email to Nora, stuck on increasingly desperate subject lines—“The event we discussed” . . . “Dress code for Monday?” . . . “Metropolitan Museum, not Opera, hahasomeonehelpme”—when I heard voices downstairs, the front door slamming like somebody had kicked it behind him.

Win’s kick.

I ran downstairs so fast, my heels skidded ahead of me on the carpet. Win was there, I heard his glittering chuckle. Then I realized who he was talking to and slowed down to give a glance at my outfit, a cursory tug, a silent groan.

Win was laughing again. “How do you know all this?”

“I got stuck in a tour group!” Oscar sounded dazed. “I looked up and couldn’t get out. It wasn’t bad, actually, so I just went with it?”

“Were they foreign?”

I rounded the corner to see my brother with his shoes already off, feet kicked up on our dining table, candy-striped socks on display.

Oscar’s back was turned. “I don’t think so. Some of them looked Amish, maybe?”

“Now I want to crash a Lincoln Center tour.”

“You’d get recognized.”

“Not if they were Amish.” Win leaned over to whap Oscar’s shoulder, like he was tagging him in a schoolyard game. “Enjoy your anonymity. Won’t last forever.”

Nobody had noticed me. If Win had been alone, I would have charged over, but I just waved feebly and said, “Hey.”

He startled like he had no idea I was going to be here. Coming from Win, it felt incongruously flattering. “Rooster!”