“Doesn’t sound like my thing,” I venture.

“Tell you what, I’ll make you a caipirinha. I’ve gotten really good at them, and I hate making them when it’s packed but it’s my favorite cocktail.”

I watch as she muddles the mint and measures the drink expertly and quickly.

I take a sip. “Oh wow, this is delicious.”

“Hat-cha,” she says. “I knew it. Franco!” she calls out to the other bartender polishing glasses and tending to the sole patron at the other end of the bar. “Mi caipirinha está perfecta ahora, yo te lo dije.”

He smiles warmly and rolls his eyes. His gaze lingers on her, and I’m certain he has a crush on Cali; I am certain everyone who comes near her has a crush on Cali.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot, Shirley.” She looks up from the lime wedges.

“What brought you to Buenos Aires? Other than perfecting your caipirinha.”

She smiles a Cheshire cat smile at me, and it occurs to me that, as much as I want to know, maybe I shouldn’t have asked her this.

“If I wanted to do that, I’d go to Brazil, honey, it’s their cocktail. But as to why I left New York, that’s a very long story. I couldn’t stay in my job anymore. I had to go somewhere, so I came here a year ago. I guess I had a vague notion that I’d like it here and I turned out to be right.”

Before it happened, I never considered other roads my life might’ve taken, and now I think of them all the time. Specifically, I think about how my choices might have altered Penny’s. We were so close in age that, growing up, our lives seemed calibrated to each other’s, like the one wouldn’t exist in the same way without the other.

“Nice,” I say. So Cali is a free spirit. She came on a whim rather than as a last resort, depending, I suppose, on what the rest of that long story contains. “And how did you meet Gianluca?”

“Here,” she says. “It’s one of his regular haunts.”

“Huh, I thought this place was a bit of an expat bar.”

“It is. Haven’t you noticed that he collects them? Us. He comes in here all the time to play pool and recruit.”

“Try to get pretty girls to come to his studio?”

“Precisely.”

“And somehow he convinced you.”

She smiles and shrugs. “I ignored him for a while, since I just thought he was trying to sleep with me.”

“Wasn’t he?”