He laughed. He hugged her. They were just about the only people in the country who weren’t involved in the rest, and so their rooftop was a little Shangri-La, in its way. For a few more minutes, while it was still quiet.

“I keep thinking”—she swallowed—“you’re about to leave.” She kissed him again. “And I’ll find you gone.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“If you have to go, be careful.”

“I’m very careful. And good—you know that.”

She nodded, but vaguely, for he knew how to act like a man who was sincere. “What’s in the telegram?”

“My mother is coming to America,” he said.

“Your mother?” She searched his eyes in confusion. “I thought she died, years ago.”

“Yes. I said that.” And he looked at her in a way not formerly in their lovers’ repertoire. His shoulders were stiff, and he was remote—that had happened before—but it was as if he were on a ship, as if he were about to call out in a foreign language and hope the natives ashore spoke it, too. “She’s alive. And coming here.”

“That’s wonderful?”

He shifted his weight under hers. He began to accept her caresses, and leaned his head against her side. It had hardly been the right thing to say, she realized, but the rising inflection at the end had kept it from being entirely wrong. He reached between the buttons of her flannel pajama top to touch her skin. With the other hand, he folded and refolded the telegram perfectly, edges lining up as sharply as a knife blade.

He smiled. “I like that you never wear a corset.”

She wondered who he knew that wore a corset, but instead she asked, “Why are you up here?”

He had come because, an hour earlier, his valet had handed him the telegram that announced his mother was coming. Churning with it, pacing, he had come to the roof. And so had missed the other news of the day, his visitations. He had scratched an ever-changing troupe of cats behind the ears and calmed down. Just because his mother was coming didn’t mean she would bring chaos with her.