“This is my natural hair color. Did you never notice that I dyed it?”

He shook his head.

Hotel manager, she said, when he asked, but she had to pitch in herself every now and then, making beds when the girls didn’t come in on time. It was a small hotel on Long Island. What had become of her dream of being a journalist? He didn’t dare ask the question.

She clasped her hands together and set them on the table. These familiar hands that he had held so many times. The red polish so pristine that he figured it was for him; there was no doubt she had just painted her nails today. Now here she sat, where she didn’t belong—where no one belonged; they were only warehoused. Suddenly he saw everything in a kind of double vision, saw the artificiality of it all becoming even greater: their island container, which they were stuck in, and this small portion of freedom that was contained within Lauren and that she had brought with her here, her connection to the outside world. He could sense how she too suffered from it: they were two people who sat here in unequal circumstances.

“How’s Princess?”

“She’s an old girl now. Her hearing’s bad.”

They smiled at each other. For a fraction of a second he saw something in her eyes from back then.

“That meant a lot to me, you taking care of her. It was like a part of me had remained free.”

She looked at him with interest as he spoke, and under her gaze he realized what she was noticing: he spoke too slowly. As if the stopped time on Ellis Island had crept into his speech.

“How’s your family in Germany? Have you heard from them?”

“Not yet.”

“You have to write them.”

He played the doltish immigrant with the thick accent. “I haff done zat. I vait for answer.”

She smiled indulgently.

“And your family,” he now asked, making an effort to be polite. “Your parents in the Catskills, how are they?”

She made a dismissive hand gesture that could have meant anything from Not worth talking about to They’re all fine.

So this was about him. All right, then.

In the window he saw the waves rising and breaking with a peaceful irregularity that was all their own.

He didn’t know if his family was still alive.

He could have written from Sandstone to try to find out, but he had been ashamed to write from a prison. Only when he got to Ellis Island had he dared to write a letter. Two weeks ago. From an internment camp. That didn’t sound quite as bad.

He leaned forward. He would start with the generals. Throughout his years in prison he had clipped out all the articles he’d seen about their executions.