“Sir, we’ll think about wind load, check the signal and make sure you didn’t damage any cable,” Michael said. “Looks like a good job.”

“Think so?” Reassured, Gilmartin stepped back for a better view. “You know, this would be even more convincing if we brought chairs out and got people to really use this as an umbrella.”

“Sir, I don’t think you’d actually want people drinking lemonade under a microwave receiver.”

“No,” Gilmartin said. He scratched his chin with the pliers. “Maybe just the neighbors.”

Stas lived alone … and not alone. Moving through the hall meant elbowing Gogol and Gorky. Poets Pushkin through Voloshin resided in a closet. The elevated thoughts of Tolstoy filled shelves above a Swedish sound system, CDs and television set. Newspapers and magazines were stacked by year. The least slip, Arkady thought, and a man could die under an avalanche of stale news, music, fantasy, romance.

Stas said, “I don’t like to think of it as messy. I prefer to think of it as life lived at full tide.”

“It looks like full tide,” Arkady said.

“Hotels are lacking in soul,” Stas said.

Laika sat by the door. Arkady could barely see her eyes through her fur, though he felt them following his every move.

“Thanks, I have someplace to go,” he said.

After the visit to the station president, Arkady had spent the rest of the day watching Benz’s house. It was dusk now and light was seeping from the room. He had decided to ride the subway until it shut down, or to buy a cheap ticket for an early-morning train so he could wait at the station. That way he would at least be more migrant than vagrant. He had come to Stas’s place only for his bag.

One question kept forcing itself to the front of Arkady’s mind. It was so obvious that it was hard work not asking. “Where is Max staying?”

“I don’t know. One drink before you go,” Stas said. “I suspect you’re in for a long night.”

Before Arkady could protest or get around the dog and out the door, his host was in the kitchen and back with two water glasses and a bottle of vodka. The vodka was iced. “Fancy,” Arkady said.

Stas filled the glasses halfway. “To Tommy.”

The cold vodka gave Arkady’s heart a brief squeeze on the way down. Alcohol didn’t seem to affect Stas; he was a frail reed that stood up to the flood. He refilled the glasses. “To Michael,” he offered. “And the snake that bites him.”

Arkady drank to that and set the glass on a stack of papers out of Stas’s reach. “I’m just curious. You go out of your way to annoy the Americans. Why don’t they fire you?”