As night settles over Brooklyn like a silence, Sofia and Antonia plant their hands against the brick wall between their apartments and they each know the other is there. They know they will not abandon one another. They give in to the strength of the bonds that have made them.

Outside a war is growing. The whole world churning. No one goes to bed on time and the radio stays crackling on until there is nothing but canned music and then static. Still, as the night passes, someone is always hovering near the radio, listening. Waiting for information, or for a reason. For proof the world is not ending. To hear a long-lost relative’s voice, or a message from God.

Until the morning broadcast, all there will be is static.

Chapter 8

The first time Antonia lays eyes on Paolo Luigio, he is a red-eyed, saggy-shouldered blur on his way into Sofia’s building, and she is not looking where she is going. When she crashes into him, a brown paper parcel tumbles out of his arms and spills passports—stiff, red, unused, full of promise and obligations—all over the floor. Paolo and Antonia stand stunned for a moment.

Antonia bends to the ground, sweeps up some of the passports, and hands them to Paolo. “Excuse me,” she says, as she nearly runs down the street. And then stops, and turns, and says, “I’m late for school,” and feels heat prickle across her cheeks and down her back.

“Morning, miss,” he says, and touches the edge of his hat.

It is as simple or as infinitely complicated as that.

It does not occur to Antonia until she is sitting in her social studies class, sweating through the seams of her starched school dress, to wonder what a man she had never seen before was doing delivering passports to Sofia’s apartment.

When she sees him again, two weeks later, she says, “Good morning,” and he smiles. She spends the rest of the day squirming each time she remembers their interaction. Her words tumbling, louder and harsher than she meant them, out of her childish lips. His gracious eyes, his nod. Antonia, trembling and suddenly much more uncomfortable than ever in the confines of her body.

Antonia finds herself waiting for the sight of Paolo’s hat making its way down the sidewalk each morning. She rarely says more than hello, but she thinks she can smell him on her clothes each day. In his presence she is butter melting. She is molten lava. She is a small green plant unfurling toward the light.

—