“I never thought of Sam as lying, exactly. It’s more like he just makes a game out of everything.” She turned to look at me. Her face was tight. I could hear the chickens muttering softly. Carlotta leaned over the wire and emptied the rest of the water from the pan into their dish. Her black braids swung. The red dress climbed her thighs. We tossed them handfuls of leftover rice.

“They still don’t lay eggs. We haven’t gotten around to getting a rooster.”

“So you’re running a convent.”

She smiled, finally, briefly. “You know, men don’t feel the same about babies at all. Aram talks about it as though it’s going to be born ten years old and ready to become his disciple. He talks about how he’ll teach him calligraphy and painting and bring him up to be a Buddhist.”

“Has he decided he’s going to stay, then?”

“He never said. He’s here. That must mean something.” She kicked at the chicken wire. The hens puffed and scuttled. “But then, everybody else in the world is here, too, and that doesn’t seem to mean much.”

Somewhere behind the house Kate bleated. Carlotta shook back her braids and squinted at the sky. “He invites everybody to come and use the cabin whenever they want. There’s always somebody there. They come in here to eat. Aram spends all his time out there talking. He doesn’t care who it is. At night he tells me how brilliant they all are.”

“I’ve never seen the cabin.”

She looked down at herself. She smoothed the red cloth of the dress till it showed the round belly beneath her breasts. “There’s a path through the trees. Lichtenstein is out there now. And Rennel.”

She turned suddenly and walked toward the house. The pan banged against her thigh as she walked.

The brush was thick around the edge of the lawn. I pushed through. The path was almost invisible, but it widened. In the dark of the pines the underbrush was dead, leaving the bare red dirt and fallen long needles. The trees were close and the branches started high. I came to the beginning of a clearing and the sunlight broke through. A board cabin with pale, curling shingles. I could hear muffled voices coming from inside. There was a log on its side in front of the door. I stepped up on it and knocked.

A belly watcher I recognized from Figarty’s party opened the door. The room beyond him was smoky.

“Is there a password or something?”

He glowered. I’d read about them, of course, and seen a few childish imitations, but this was the original article.