You could reserve parts of their building’s rooftop terrace for little gatherings like this; Ilanka’s parents did so at least a few times every fall and then more often in spring and summer. Sometimes—like today—they showed up without signing up and then had to have a chat with the building manager, but luckily no one else had reserved the space.

“Did I see you talking to Eli Alvarez this week?” Svetlana asked.

They’d moved away from their parents to sit in loungers by the closed pool. A helicopter took off across the river and rose into the sky like a futuristic robot bug.

“I can’t imagine.” Ilanka tried to laugh it off.

“Pretty sure I did,” Svetlana said.

“Pretty sure you didn’t,” Ilanka said.

“Pretty sure I did,” Svetlana said.

“We gonna do this all day?” Ilanka checked her phone again. She had a text from Marwan that said: There in five.

“What’s up?” Svetlana said, nodding at the phone.

“Just a text,” Ilanka said. She’d read a short article about the incident at his restaurant. One good thing about being Russian: even if your country was corrupt and hacked elections, you could pass for “American” if you wanted to.

“Who from?” Svetlana said.

“It’s a long story,” Ilanka said. She put a hand to her stomach. “I’m gonna go down and use the bathroom.”

“Okay. TMI. Then we’ll do the thing? The movie?” Svetlana asked.

“Oh,” Ilanka said. “About that. I’m grounded.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain when I get back. But I doubt they’ll let us go.”

Ilanka went inside the building and punched the elevator down button. It was already there, so she got in and hit L and passed through the empty lobby to the front revolving door.

Marwan was coming up the block on his bike. He got off to walk beside it and waved a perfunctory sort of wave, and Ilanka did the same back.

When he got to her, he pulled the device from his bag and held it out to her. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” Ilanka said.

“You need to be reminded of the rules?” he asked.

“I’ll be fine,” Ilanka said, and she turned to go.

“Well, it’s trying to figure out where it came from,” he said. “So if you can help with that in any way, that’d be great.”

She turned back around. “How could I possibly help with that?” He was good looking, up close.

“I don’t know, Ilanka”—he sounded tired and she felt sort of bad for being so sarcastic—“do you have a bag for it?”

“No one pays any attention to anything,” she said. “I’ll grab a bag at the apartment in a minute.”

“I’m not sure you’re taking this seriously enough,” he said.

“Maybe you’re taking it too seriously?”