Tom was wearing grey tweed, a steel-blue sweater under his jacket. His glasses needed cleaning. Allam, with ceremony, with solemnity, shook hands and repeated each name as he was introduced.

Gwen, in a shapeless black turtleneck over black pants, no jewellery, no adornments, sat at the table with her decaf latte and silently admired Cassie’s centrepiece of oak leaves circling a small but brilliantly orange pumpkin. How did nature manage a colour so perfect for the waning season of fall? She wondered about Rico’s response to colour. Was he attracted to orange? In her search for information, she’d read that certain parrots refused to eat any food that was red. Others refused food chopped a particular way. Like humans, parrots had idiosyncrasies, likes, dislikes. But surely they had colour vision; eyesight was their prime feature. Why would they be adorned with spectacular shades of their own if not to attract one another, mate, stake out territory, be seen? She would do more reading in that direction. Her thoughts continued to drift.

Allam, the new person, was seated beside her. She looked over and then away. He was almost the same height as Tom, who had introduced him, but Allam was slightly wider in the shoulders, bulkier. His hair was dark and thick at the back, but with whorls of grey. He slipped off his jacket and Gwen was certain she could smell autumn wind on his sleeves as he draped it over the back of the chair. She wondered how Layamon the priest would have described autumn wind in 1200. Maybe he had, and another chronicle was lying in a monastery somewhere in England or France, still undiscovered.

Addie was looking around at the others and thinking, Let’s stretch our boundaries, push into ever-widening circles. She liked the way Allam joined in with a tone of earnestness that could not be feigned. Each word spoken as if it was of vital importance and equal to every other word. She wondered if anything Allam expressed would ever be considered lightweight. Probably not—but then she thought better of this. Why wouldn’t he have lightweight thoughts, the same as anyone else? She wondered if he was from Syria. She didn’t recognize him from the sponsoring group with which she was affiliated, or from any social gathering at which new Syrian families had been present. Not that she’d attended many. At the last, held at a church hall, she’d watched five or six children laugh and shout as they took turns riding a bicycle in circles around a small courtyard. Inside, she’d spoken with a group of women who surrounded her, ambushing her with questions. They were perpetually trying to make sense of new ways of doing almost everything. Addie was recognized as a problem-solver, partly because she’d managed to persuade the hospital to hire two Syrians: a man, a woman. They were doing basic jobs—laundry and kitchen—but they had full-time hours, a foot in the door. Four feet in the door.

Hazzley, delighted to have a sixth member seated at the round table, was reminded of the weekend crossword: idiolect, speech habits peculiar to a particular person. She listened closely to Allam’s purposeful pronunciation. “I am honoured to be part of this company,” he announced as they took their seats. And from that moment, he referred to the group as “the company.” No one thought of themselves as a member of a company, but no one objected, either.