In our new, abnormal world, a surprising number of things are exactly as they used to be. We eat, we shop, we sleep, we send our kids to school, and we fuck. Only there are rules about fucking.

“How long has it been going on?” Lin asks.

“About two years, I guess.” There’s no sense in telling her I can point to the exact date when I first noticed Lorenzo’s hand on the satin wood of the music box, when I felt a pleasant electrical current run up and down my spine at the thought of that hand on my skin.

“Only before? Or after?”

I float away from her now, from the sterile functionality of our office to the cluttered crab shack in Maryland, its walls covered from floor to ceiling with marine-themed kitsch. A fishing net there, a bottled boat on the windowsill, a rusted anchor leaning against a wall in the corner. And a bed. It’s the bed I remember best because it was lumpy and squeaky and too narrow for both of us to lie on comfortably without overlapping limbs. I loved that bed.

We shared it only once after the Pure Movement went national, which is what Lin meant by Only before? Or after? I’d taken the Metro down to Eastern Market in early March to the cheese shop that used to be run by an elderly couple and now was the sole concern of the husband. I can’t remember what I was looking for, maybe smoked scamorza, maybe fresh ricotta. Or, maybe, I wasn’t looking for cheese at all.

He stood there at the baker’s stall with an armful of produce and flowers and with a distant look in his eyes. We’d spent ten months without seeing each other, not once, and we would have gone on not seeing each other if I hadn’t left the cheese shop and walked straight across the market hall.

I risked two words. “Still here?”

“Still here. I have a ticket home in August,” he said. “After the summer term finishes. I can’t stay in your country any longer.” As he spoke, he avoided my eyes and fixed on the silver bracelet. “I wouldn’t have stayed out the summer, but they made a generous offer.”

August was five months away. When he left, I knew he would never come back to the States. Who would?

Lorenzo paid for his bread. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”