“Eli Leibovich,” Eli says as he answers.

“It’s me,” says Saul.

“Saul! Right on time. Any news?”

“Nothing much this month. I’m sorry. You know, I’m not even sure they have plans for expansion right now.” Saul can feel his usefulness ebbing. There is little he can pass along to Eli, other than the small details he can catalogue as he walks up the stairs to the Fianzo office and then back down.

“Everyone has plans for expansion, Saul,” says Eli. “It’s human nature.” And then, “Tell you what: meet me for a drink this evening.”

Saul is due at home. Sofia will notice if he’s gone, and she might mention it to Rosa, or Joey. She might mention it to Antonia, who might mention it to Paolo, whose friendship with Saul has deteriorated over the last year along with his mental health and his own marriage. Paolo, who wanted so much more than his desk job.

“Saul?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t this evening,” says Saul. “My family.”

“Your family,” Eli repeats. “And how are they, your family?”

Saul doesn’t like talking about his family with Eli. He compartmentalizes. “They’re well,” he says.

Eli can sense his reticence. “Call anytime,” he says. Eli’s warmth is a weapon. The kinder his voice, the more severe the consequences.

Saul hangs up, sweating.

Everyone has plans for expansion, says Eli, over and over again in Saul’s head as Saul walks home. It’s human nature.

Is it? Saul wonders. All he wants is to shrink into the places in his life where he feels at home. All he wants is for those places to coexist.

—

When Robbie starts school, Antonia decides if she is ever going to go back to school herself she is going to have to take it into her own hands. So she hatches a plan: Monday and Wednesday mornings, after she has dropped Robbie off and Paolo has left for work, Antonia packs herself a snack and a notebook and a sweater, for it is always freezing in the library, and sneaks furtively out of her apartment and down the street, as if someone might stop her.

She still has no money for extracurriculars but the memory of reading Antigone in high school has come back to her like a long-lost friend and she has begun reading the classics section systematically. She sits curled into a chair like a snail into its shell in one of the vast, echoing stone reading rooms on the third floor and from nine in the morning to twelve noon, Antonia loses herself in the drama and heartache of another time entirely. Aeschylus and Euripides. Aristotle and Ovid.