“Good friends, I think?”

“She was a good friend.” Sarah nodded. “He was, too, in his way. But it’s been a long time.”

The man shrugged and waved his hand again, as if he were now dismissing the notion of time itself.

“My husband travels so much for work; when he’s home, we usually end up staying put. And you? Do you travel a lot?”

“You know,” he said, taking his time, “when my wife was alive, she always wanted to go to this place and that place and I did not want to go anyplace. I thought I hated to travel. As it turns out, I enjoy it very much.”

“Well, that’s great. I mean, I feel kind of bad for your wife, but—”

“Don’t,” he said sharply.

“What?”

“You needn’t feel bad for her.”

“Okay. No, I only meant—”

“It is very humorous to me when people use this expression: ‘Do you think people ever really change?’ Because of course they do.”

“I agree,” she almost whispered.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said I agree.” She cleared her throat. “People change. People definitely change. We tell each other these lies all the time, every day. Like ‘You look the same.’ No one looks the same. We tell ourselves so many lies about time. The way we deal with time. We’re all just—hurtling toward death. But it’s like—‘Oh, people don’t change’ and ‘You look the same’…”

Her words shredded the air with their shrillness. She should have kept reading.

The foreign man said, “I am a visitor here. You are a little bit strange and I am grateful for your conversation.”

“I am a little bit strange.” She settled into a smile. “It’s true.”

“As am I.”

“And where are you from?”

“I live in Washington.” As if he’d just remembered. “Washington, D.C.”

“And before that?”

“I come from Prague.”

“Oh! I love Prague.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been several times. My husband had a fellowship there a long time ago, soon after Havel was elected. He shot a film. He was a filmmaker, too, I mean, back then,” she found herself explaining; was she boasting again? “The crew was Czech.”

“I see. It was a good place for foreigners at this time. Our beautiful buildings, our young idealistic people.” He smiled archly. “And of course the low cost of filming.”

She shook her head. “No—I mean—it was so much more than that.”

“Yes?” He looked into her eyes, and for a moment she didn’t know quite how to respond. His eyes were bottle green, his eyebrows and stubble stark white.

“It was more than that. Everyone was so knowledgeable and passionate and—”

“You were young. Yes? You were very young.”

She laughed uncomfortably. “Well, sure.”

He rooted around in his jacket pocket and produced a torn piece of paper. There was a scribbled address, the words St. Ivo. “Are you familiar with this restaurant?”