“Now that’s a really tough question,” Ed said. “I went to college here, but truth be told I’m not a citizen.”
“Your English is way better than mine,” she said with an exaggerated drawl. They were passing by a small estate, the downward slope of its rolling aquamarine lawn fitted with a sign that read HATE HAS NO HOME HERE in many languages, including the three Ed had grown up with. “But last night you said you’re Korean, right?”
“Not formally,” Ed said. “I have Swiss, UK, and Canadian citizenship. I guess I have to nab me something in the EU after Brexit. Lots of folk becoming Maltese.” So petrol princes and sunbaked Russian orangutans were now just folk. What was wrong with him?
“But you spend time here? In the city, I mean.”
“Sure. Plenty. Home away from home.”
“And you never felt like becoming an American?” She didn’t know why she was pressing him on this one point.
“That’s for people without options,” Ed said. “Sorry, I mean…” He trailed off.
“No, I get it. Nation in free fall. Where did you go to college?”
“School of Foreign Service in DC. My mother wanted me to be a diplomat. But it just didn’t take.”
“Well, you’re not super diplomatic,” Dee said. He looked across the road at her. She was smiling. That memory again: Bologna, junior year abroad, that tall ridiculous girlfriend, being carried in her arms, La Pietà. “But I bet a lot of your friends are diplomats.”
“The children of diplomats.” He realized he needed some commonality with her at this point. “Senderovsky is one of the few self-made people I know. Him and his high-school friends.”
The liberal estate continued to scroll before them. In a pond made by a careful human hand, a gently streaming duck, its head iridescent, was talking up itself to anyone who would listen. Rich people’s chickens crossed the road, their heads held up high. The road sprinted upward, away from the ideal pasturelands and toward the state road. The sun disappeared behind a prayer shawl.
“Why does Sasha do this?” Dee asked. “Have all those cabins? It must cost a fortune to maintain.”
“You mentioned that at dinner,” Ed said. The gentle slope was winding him. He had to stop smoking. Yet how desperately he wanted to smoke. He took out his pack of Gauloises.
“I was drunk and rude last night,” Dee said. “Not one of my proudest moments. Can I bum one?”
They met in the middle of the road, both with their arms extended. Ed passed her a lighter, then thought better of it, came up to her, dangerously close, and lit the cigarette hanging from her mouth. All the bungalows were outfitted with the same cheap floral shampoo, and while Ed hated the greasy clump it had made of his own hair （just this morning, he had sent away for a better shampoo）， the scent of it on Dee made him feel as if they were fellow travelers who had met on the high road, pilgrims destined to find each other. She exhaled the smoke away from him, but he wanted to follow it, to draw it into his own nicotine-greased lungs. He needed to say something about Senderovsky that would build trust between him and Dee. He knew how curious she was about her former teacher, how curious we all are about our mentors.
“I don’t think his finances are very sound,” he heard himself say. “I think he’s floundering.”
This had the intended effect. Dee nodded as she smoked, her face pursed in thought. “Does his wife make a lot of money?” she asked.
There was a striver’s innocence to that question. “She used to be in private practice,” Ed said, “but now she works for a nonprofit for old Russians with mental problems. Her sister died a few years back.”
“That’s terrible.”
“That’s when she switched jobs.”
“I think Sasha once called her ‘the moral conscience of our family.’？” They both laughed. “These cigarettes are strong.”
“Sasha’s been trying to make up the difference with TV work,” Ed said, now fully enjoying the gossiping.
“Even though he doesn’t own a TV.”
“Ding, ding, ding! Maybe that’s why his shows never get made.”
“Poor Sasha.”
“Not meant for these times,” Ed said. They were both somehow cheered up by this conversation. “But he means well.”
They were passing tract houses with green-gray rusted siding now, the properties uniformly square and evocative of the city’s outer boroughs, but with a full acre to their names. A red sign on one lawn, its grass cut to within an inch of its life, read ALL LIVES MATTER.