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“That would be great. Thanks, Caralora,” I say.

Zach says, “This is pretty nice whiskey, Nick.” He writes, Probably federal gvment’s?

I take the pen from Zach. Why here?

He writes, Nadia?

Caralora writes, why Nadia?

Zach writes, Hyde Park demo—she hit a policeman with her sign when he grabbed her from behind. He died of brain hemorrhage a week ago. She doesn’t know she hit anyone—she doesn’t know they are looking for her.

We all fall silent, horror-struck.

“Is that why you’re here tonight?” I say. I clap my hand over my mouth as soon as I’ve said it.

Zach hesitates, then recovers. “For the whiskey? Of course not. I guess I must be here to meet you.” He writes, I was assigned to take Nadia to safety. Jr’s been protecting her from the police—when we take Jr tonight, they will arrest Nadia—

Nick stands up quietly and pulls the yellow paper from under Zach’s hands before he can finish. Zach hands him a cigarette lighter. Caralora says, “Where are you from, Zach?”

“Tulsa,” he says. They banter about the earthquakes and the increasingly unbearable summers while we watch Nick take the paper to the sink and set it on fire. It takes only a few moments to burn to ash. Nick drops the last corner into the sink and then washes it down the drain. Oh, Nadia. I knew she was in danger, but I thought that after tonight we’d go back to how things were. We wanted to change things; we didn’t expect to be changed ourselves. I want to run upstairs and find my other self, make her tell me that Nadia will be okay. Nick slips out of the kitchen and I wonder if he’s had the same idea.

“We should get some sleep,” Zach says, touching my hand. “It’s getting late.”

Caralora gives us sleeping bags from the stash in Nick’s bedroom and unlocks one of the guest rooms. She turns up the radiator and says “Good night, sleep tight.” I kiss her on the lips, and she holds my gaze for a few seconds. It feels like the passing of an imaginary torch. Caralora closes the door with a soft click as she leaves. I turn the lock.

Zach unzips the sleeping bags and unfurls them onto the bed. He turns to me, speaks softly. “Um, would you like the bed to yourself?”

“I’m cold,” I say. “Let’s warm each other up.” I start to peel off Nadia’s silver dress. I’m wearing my own underwear and Nadia’s stockings and garter belt. Zach shakes his head, and I put the dress back on, feeling silly.

Zach comes over to me and speaks into my ear. “We need to be able to bolt, we can’t get too distracted.” He touches my shoulder, smiles. “You’ll never make it as a spy, Alba. That bra is a tell.”

I feel my cheeks flush. I hop into bed as he takes off his jacket and tie. The sleeping bags are cold and musty. There are strings of blue Hanukkah lights draped over the headboard of the bed, and I reach over my head and turn them on. Zach turns off the overhead lights, sets an alarm on his phone and climbs in with me. “I’m too tall for this bed,” he says softly. “I hate beds with footboards.”

“It’s not like we’re going to actually sleep,” I whisper. “What’s your plan?”

I feel his lips against my ear. “It’s after four now. We should be up and about by five thirty. I need to find Nadia and be out of the house by six.”

“Does Nadia know you’re her exit plan?”

“No. I don’t think she realizes that she needs one. As far as I know, she’s unaware that she hit anyone, much less a cop. It was a pretty chaotic scene. I’ve been afraid to text her, because she’s not very careful with her phone and she’s been glued to Junior all night. I should have said something when she brought us the sandwiches, but I wasn’t too sure how you fit into the scheme of things.”

“I don’t fit, really,” I reply. “I’m usually involved in the planning stages, or, actually, my future selves are in the thick of it and I tell myself on a need-to-know basis. One of them must have specified that I am supposed to be here tonight.”

Zach is quiet. Maybe he’s thinking what I’m thinking: my future selves have ulterior motives. “Do you ever resent being a spectator of your own life?” he asks.

That wasn’t what I was expecting him to say. “That isn’t how it feels to me, Zach. I feel free enough, and safe enough to take chances.” I wiggle closer to him and tuck my arm around his waist.

His hair is falling into his eyes. He brushes it aside, strokes my face. He says, “Doesn’t it instill a certain passivity, knowing what’s going to happen? I keep trying to get some control over my life, but lately everything works against that.”

“I don’t know if I would call it passivity. I end up feeling responsible for all the outcomes, even if I could not possibly have saved anyone.” I feel a twinge of panic; is he really going to take Nadia away? I tap my ear and make the sign for could you turn that thing off?

Zach reaches over me and grabs his phone. He types I’m signing off for an hour and hits Send. Then he turns the phone off. I take it from him and put it back on the nightstand.

“Do you know who Wednesday is?” I ask. “Did she tell you to hide Nadia?”

Zach says, “I figured that out a while ago; I’m an Addams Family fan. I’d never met Rosa before tonight. But no, the request came from an old friend in Tulsa. I have no idea how they knew about Nadia and I didn’t ask.”

“What are you supposed to do with Nadia?”