“We’re all getting together tonight to celebrate before finals,” she said. “Why don’t you come too?”

“Me?” Bertil asked.

Anna nodded. “Yes, you,” she said. “Just do me a favor. Don’t appear out of nowhere.”

“I’ll try and walk like an elephant,” Bertil promised, grinning. She’d never seen him look so happy.

Linda didn’t ask where Anna was going to celebrate with the others. All she said was, “Be careful on your bike; the streets are slippery.”

“Just imagine! Your last test!” Magnus said.

“Only for Hennes,” Anna replied. “We’ve still got our last history test on Friday. And then finals.”

Magnus shook his head. “God, it seems like only yesterday you were in kindergarten.”

Before she left to meet the others, he bent down—he was still so much taller than she was—and said in a low voice, “What of the world has been on your mind lately? Has it passed? Or … is it possible … that you’ll meet whatever it is tonight, when you’re out celebrating with the others?”

“No,” Anna said. “The others are absolutely unworldly.”

Magnus watched her smile. “One day you’ll tell us, won’t you? Linda’s worried, you know. Because lately, you’ve been … she says you’ve been acting so different.”

“One day I’ll explain,” Anna said. “But tonight is just a perfectly normal night at the bar, with Gitta and the others. It’s got nothing to do with anything.”

But Anna was wrong.

They met at the Mittendrin, opposite the dome. The Mittendrin was one of the few bars where you could still smoke. In the tiny side room, separated from the bar by a heavy black curtain that extended from ceiling to floor, a cigarette machine blinked.

Anna always felt like she’d stepped onto a stage when she passed through the curtain. Magnus had told her that in his day there had been a table made of an old door, complete with the handle and everything, and that the armchairs had been more comfortable. The Mittendrin had been renovated a dozen times since then, but the only real change was that there were more smokers. The air in the bar was 70 percent cigarette smoke, 28 percent alcohol and slightly strained coolness, and 2 percent the smoke of something that wasn’t cigarettes. It was also dark, and Anna wasn’t sure whether this was because of the absence of light or the presence of smoke, which prevented the light from passing through.

Gitta leafed through the drink menu, happily taking a drag, when Anna joined her and the others. The list of cocktails seemed endless.

“Sex on the beach,” Gitta said.

“In this weather?” Hennes asked.

“That’s the drink I’m gonna order, stupid.”

Bertil was sitting with a beer, trying to look relaxed, which he wasn’t; Frauke threw Anna a glance, cursing her for inviting him. Anna shrugged and ordered a glass of vodka.

“You don’t even like vodka,” Gitta said. “Have a cocktail with us, little lamb. They have the weirdest things—I’ll find something pretty for you, something nice and colorful, with a lot of fruit … we’re celebrating math after all …”

“Why don’t you let her have what she wants,” Bertil said.

“I get it.” Gitta looked over at Frauke and winked. “I know why she brought him. He’s her bodyguard. Come on, Bertil, don’t look so stricken; it was a joke, all right? Relax. So, what I wanted to say was … once these final exams are over, we’ll …”

Anna leaned back and watched Gitta, who was, simultaneously, planning their futures, gesturing wildly, smoking, drinking something that looked like a cross between a palm tree and a swimming pool, and trying to move closer to Hennes. Anna thought about how much she liked Gitta and about how little Gitta actually knew of the world, even though she always acted like she knew everything. She felt a strange disconnect from her old friend, and from Frauke and Hennes and Bertil, too. She sat there and heard them talking but didn’t listen; she watched them but looked through them, like she was watching a movie. She was sitting on the other side of the screen with her vodka, and she was a thousand years old. None of them had ever seen an island sink into the sea; none of them had ever removed as many splinters from a wound as she had—the splinters from what seemed like half a cupboard full of plates. None of them had ever been in the stairwell of 18 Amundsen Street. And then it came to her, all of a sudden, like the crack of a shotgun: they’re the ones inside a soap bubble. Not me.

She talked to them without even listening to herself, talked to them about unimportant things; she saw that glasses were emptied and refilled with more brightly colored liquids, with different flower-shaped fruits; she passed the joint that Hennes gave her without touching it; she saw the time go by but wasn’t there. She was on a ship; she was out on the ocean; she was walking with Abel between the winter chestnuts, his hand in hers. At one point, she realized that Bertil was no longer drinking a beer but instead sharing a cocktail with Frauke—the two of them drinking out of the same glass with two straws. Anna thought this was cruel of Frauke because she knew that Frauke didn’t take him seriously. No one took Bertil seriously. And she wondered if Bertil had shared Hennes’s joint. Probably. Just to be cool. But she was too far away to give it more thought.

“Anna,” Gitta said, “you’re dreaming. And you haven’t smoked anything … are you dreaming of your university student?”

“Which stu—ah, my student,” Anna said. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. I think I’m gonna go out for a minute, I need a bit of fresh air, a few double Os.”

“What?” Gitta asked, leaning against Hennes. “What are you talking about, little lamb?”

“O₂, Gitta,” Anna replied. “Oxygen.”

She got up and elbowed her way through the crowd; by now, too many people were squeezed in the spaces between tables.

“Wait,” someone behind her said. Bertil. “Anna! I’ll come with you.”

She shook her head. “Thanks, Bertil,” she said, “but I want to be alone for a minute. Not long, okay? I …” I want to see if the stars here form a dog and a wolf, too, she thought. If Perseus looks like a hunter, and how many hunters there are. “I’ll … I’ll be back in a minute,” she said.

Walking into the cold outside was like walking into an icy wall. She chided herself for not taking her coat. She pulled her hands into the sleeves of her sweater and saw that she wasn’t the only person who’d come out for fresh air. To the left of the entrance, there was a small aluminum table and a bench that was used more in summer; a few guys—guys Anna didn’t like—were standing there in the darkness, holding beers. Two of them had extremely short hair and necks like bulls. She took a step back, instinctively, and then heard a voice she knew. The voice named a price, and Anna looked again. It was a voice that usually said very different words, melodious words, fairy-tale words. Abel. Of course. Abel on his nightly round through the bars. Somehow she hadn’t thought … she hadn’t expected to meet him here. She figured he’d be working the Seaside District. Stupid of her, she thought. There weren’t many bars out there. By comparison, the city was packed with them. She felt warmth rise inside her, a nice and friendly warmth, like the warmth of a fireplace. It was strange: she heard him talking to guys who made her afraid; she met him while he was dealing; and still she felt warm inside.

“Hi ya, darlin!” one of the two guys said, noticing her. “Can I get a light?” He came over to where she stood, followed by his friend, who had a cigarette between his fingers. “My lighter’s fucked up,” he said, looking at her in a way that she definitely didn’t like. She thought that it might be a good idea to go back inside now, but the two guys were standing between her and the door to the bar. She wasn’t sure how sober they were. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t smoke.”