“Oh, I know where we could go,” said Ángel. “There's an island on the gulf side. The water’s calm and smooth, and the bottom’s just clean white sand and shells. If you go swimming after the sun goes down, the water’s warmer than the air. It’s really relaxing. You’d like it.”

Stupid thing to have said—he wasn’t even allowed to go to the grocery store, and Oberon couldn’t show his face without inciting a riot. But cold, stressed, snowed-in people everywhere probably talked longingly about islands and beaches. Sunlit, green, with pearly sands and aqua water, far away, out of reach.

Now he started the recording again, touched the plectrum to the mandolin strings, played, fumbled, stopped.

The door to the office opened and Oberon emerged. He stood in the doorway and gazed at Ángel for a minute. Ángel, recalling his evening of repeatedly failing to play the mandolin, winced. Hopefully Oberon hadn’t been listening.

Oberon came into the room and sat on the carpet, his back braced against the turquoise leather armchair, across from Ángel. He stretched out his long legs, crossed his ankles, and extended his hand.

“You play the guitar,” he said, “and I’ll play the mandolin part.”

Apparently Oberon had been listening, and Ángel’s incompetence was driving him crazy. Ángel blushed, stifled the urge to apologize. “Sounds good.” He removed the strap from his neck and passed over the little instrument, then picked up his guitar. Running a thumb over the strings to check the tuning, he glanced at Oberon.

“You should record this,” said Oberon. “From the top.”

So Ángel set the computer to record, put his fingers on the strings, took a breath to center himself, and began to play.

It was a bittersweet minor-key melody that had evolved from arpeggio practice and his own homesickness. The first verse was the melody on the guitar, accompanied only by the timekeeping thump of his thumb on the soundboard. On the second verse Oberon’s mandolin came in impeccably, the notes silvery and sweet, precisely timed to Ángel’s guitar. Oberon played with the delicacy that Ángel had utterly failed to achieve.

Ángel closed his eyes and fell into the song.

They flowed together, flawlessly, into the key modulation at the bridge. It sounded good. It sounded great. With Oberon playing, it sounded even better than he had imagined it would.

On the final verse, Oberon diverged from the accompaniment as Ángel had written it. He improvised an original harmony that was so perfect, so poignant, that Ángel’s eyes watered behind their closed lids. The essence of the song was transformed by Oberon’s harmony from loneliness and sorrow to something resembling hope—fearful, longing, hopeless hope.

They brought the song to its trembling close, notes converging, ringing together, then falling silent.

Ángel turned off the recording with shaking fingers.