It’s like getting into the vaults of Bank Leumi, he said.

But with no money inside, her mother replied, to nip that idea in the bud.

She waited, watching through the peephole until two blurry figures appeared, a tall man carrying a briefcase and a little old one wearing a hat. The tall one took out a handkerchief.

Tamar imagines them: the little one with a brown felt hat, and the tall one whose forehead has begun to glisten with sweat, a high forehead, the hairline receded considerably, by next year he’ll be bald, but with a nice curly black beard, and delicate glasses. She sees her mother opening the door a crack without unhooking the chain that Tamar installed four or five years ago, just before she returned to New York and installed an alarm system in her own house, since she, too, was newly on her own.

Social Services slid his business card through the opening.

Thank you, I apologize for the trouble. Ron Azrak. May we come in?

What kind of name is Azrak?

He smiled. He had a nice face, her mother tells her, very warm eyes.

Turkish, my grandfather was born in Istanbul.

Really? I’ve always wanted to go to Turkey.

There’s still time, Social Services said with a sparkle in his eyes, knowing just what to say to make an old woman feel good, somewhere there was a mother proud to have raised a son like him, so polite and considerate, so what if there’s no PhD after his name, her mother tells her, out of the kindness of his heart and a sense of duty to his people he’s chosen to work in Special Services, a thankless job if ever there was one.

You mean Social Services, Tamar says, tossing the rest of her lunch into the trash and glancing at the clock: still twenty minutes before her next patient.

Right, says her mother.

The Bosphorus! her mother had probably said to Social Services, showing off the knowledge she’d absorbed from countless hours of late-night TV. If there’s a river in the world with a better name, I don’t know it. And to think that it divides two continents! she’d have said, because her mother also knew how to turn on the charm if she wanted to.

I’d like to explain why I’m here, Ilana, said Social Services. I think you should sit down, it all may come as a bit of a shock.

He led her to the sofa. She hadn’t exactly invited him in, her mother tells her, give an inch and they take a foot.