His letters always went to the same address in Brooklyn, which led him to assume that Lauren lived alone. No husband, no kids. Something about that pleased him, and he examined the feeling—was it schadenfreude? Or the hope that things might still turn out between them? Forgiveness, a fresh start, and maybe America would even take him back in. Everything would be good again.

He now found himself close to Lauren, and Lauren wanted to come visit him. Could she bring him anything, a bean pie for example? The second he read this, he knew that she was actually going to come. A few weeks had passed since, but today she would be here. It would be their first time seeing each other in five years.

He was still sitting by himself. It was ten past three. The room had filled up. He kept his eye on the door and the guard, and sometimes he looked at the two-tone Florsheim slippers worn by the German man next to him. He was having a discussion with his wife, an American, about her taking over the business, a shoe store in Bushwick. He knew that the two of them had children, and they were very lucky that their American mother hadn’t been taken onto the island with them.

There were so many young people here. They played badminton in the afternoons in the giant registry room, where once someone had looked into his mouth, eyes, and ears. And no one told them how long they would have to stay on the island. Or what would happen after they left. Lawyers pocketed their money, then regretfully informed them that things hadn’t gone their way in court.

Sometimes his favorite line from Thoreau would echo in his head, something about how a man’s wealth had nothing to do with his outer circumstances, but he’d long found it questionable.

A woman had appeared, seeming somewhat antsy as she looked around, craning her neck shortsightedly. And then she was standing there in front of him, looking down at him with a little smile; without meaning to he had remained seated, and now he decided to stay seated. Her breasts fuller, her face rounder. Her hair styled in a helmet of stiff curls—it made her look stuffy. She was thirty-one now.

“You have to go through a tunnel and then through all these different doors before you finally get here.”

“I wasn’t checking the time,” he said and tried to understand what she was saying. She was still telling him about her trip here.

Because she was so close and yet so different, he couldn’t look her in the eye. He looked at the shoes next to him, the Florsheim slippers, and nodded, yes, a tunnel when you get off the ferry, and then the room where they search you. “But it wasn’t so bad,” she said quickly.

“Are you dying your hair now?”