The whole apartment smells of chemical lemon. Which means Pledge. Which means Jennifer was here today. Jennifer is a small, amazingly industrious woman Graham pays to come in every week to clean. When she leaves, the entire apartment is immaculate. She has three cell phones (also four passports under different names; Cate went through her purse once), which she sets out on the kitchen counter while she’s cleaning; she is vigilantly poised for incoming information. Her driver’s license identifies her as Raluca. She comes to work in a fur coat. She told Cate she made it.

She comes from terrible poverty in a beautiful setting in the Carpathian Mountains, a rural area, grindingly poor. Cate stands a little in awe of Jennifer. She has lived through extreme cold, hunger, and fear. She had three root canals done without novocaine, just gripping the arms of the dentist’s chair. She has triumphed over circumstances of poverty and ignorance and is now negotiating her way through a culture that does not value her. Still, it’s better to admire her from a little distance. To enter into a conversation is a step into quicksand. Her main topic is her various ailments. (She has so many that, if you added up all of them, Cate once figured, every single part of her body has hurt, blown up, been infested with ringworm, or suddenly prolapsed. Or itched like crazy, or, according to her, really needed to be sawed off.) She has a boyfriend, who is hiding somewhere. From Interpol. Cate didn’t know Interpol still existed. Whatever he did was not his fault. Legal maneuvers are being arranged. Things may or may not work out. Once she gets going, there’s no stopping her. She doesn’t break for breath or paragraphing. Interaction for her is you nodding at her rhetorical “Do you know what it is that I am saying?” tagged onto whatever run-on sentence. There’s no polite way to extricate yourself. If they are both at home, Cate and Graham work a system where, after ten minutes, one goes into a closet and calls the other, pretending to be someone important with something crucial to be attended to. Immediately.

It’s easier to just be out on Wednesdays. Even Graham finds somewhere to go.

“Hungry?” he says now. He and Sailor have followed Cate into the kitchen. “New supplies for base camp.” He nods toward the table. Ripped-open Dean & DeLuca FedEx cartons with their arctic blocks of Styrofoam padding, their steaming packets of dry ice, clutter the surface. Large chunks of cheese, three bottles (one already open) of Pouilly-Fuissé, a package of shrink-wrapped blinis next to a jar of caviar, a crock of vegetable pâté.

“Not really. Mostly I’m exhausted.”