“Coffee,” I say, though I really want a glass of wine—something Luka warned me against. “Alcohol jacks your persuasion,” he said before he exited the bus ahead of me. “Better to be nervous and amped in case you need it.”

No worries there. My heart is drumming so hard I actually felt dizzy the minute I stepped inside.

My gaze lingers on a couple seated near the front window, their hands twined atop the table. They’re all European chic—he, in skinny black pants and a fedora, she with her thin sweater dress, sunglasses perched on her head. There’s an older man sitting at a table against the wall, a paper folded in front of him. He taps away at a phone, glasses low across his nose. They’re the only guests other than myself.

I glance at my phone. Three minutes past. I try not to bounce my knee or drum my fingers on the table. I’d shoved my hat in my backpack after I sat down, so I settle for obsessively smoothing the hair over my scrubby patch until the owner comes back with an espresso-size cup of coffee. He sets it in front of me with a small glass of water. I drink the water right away, shot-style, my mouth drier than I thought possible.

The fact is, I’m not just nervous to meet this person I don’t remember. I’m desperate to lay eyes on someone else like me. To hear, firsthand, what it means to be what I am. To get some answers.

Just as I start to doctor up the coffee, I find myself glancing at the open door as though a horn has just sounded from that direction. But there was no horn. A couple of teenagers pass by the café door, one laughing and jabbing the other in the shoulder. A dog barks somewhere outside. And then I feel the café itself fade into my periphery and fall away. There is only the door and the street beyond.

An instant later a lanky form fills the frame, blocking out the afternoon light. He steps into the café and unwinds a scarf from his neck, the end of which was draped over his head as though he has come in not from the September sun but from the desert. He’s scraggly from the hair on his head to his beard, wearing work pants and a long-sleeved shirt, messenger bag slung across his chest. I am hyperaware of him, as though he exists more than the rest of the patrons combined.

He walks directly to my table as the owner greets him with a barely perceptible nod. Taking me by the arm, he says, “Come, hurry.” And I know by his voice this is Ivan. Behind him, the couple rise from their seats, move toward us in his wake. They are no longer holding hands.