There was no sign of her at all. By now he was on Woodson, running left and right, looking down all the little side streets and into shop windows, feeling more and more desperate. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He had lost her.

It started to rain.

THE DOORBELL rang. Anna went to the door and opened it.

“Frank! Wow, you’re soaked.”

He must have been caught in the downpour that had begun about half an hour before, and was already mostly finished. It was odd he hadn’t taken shelter during the worst of it. He looked like he had dived into a swimming pool with all his clothes on.

“Don’t worry,” she said as he hesitated on the porch, dripping like a statue in a fountain. “Here, you need a towel for your face.” She provided one from the vestibule’s coat closet. “The rain really got you.”

“Yeah.”

She was somewhat surprised to see him. She had thought he was uninterested in the Khembalis, even slightly dismissive of them. And he had sat through the afternoon’s lecture wearing one of his signature looks he had a kind of Jon Gruden face, able to express fifty minute gradations of displeasure, and the one at the lecture had been the one that said “I’m keeping my eyes from rolling in my head only by the greatest of efforts.” Not the most pleasant of expressions on anyone’s face, and it had only gotten worse as the lecture went on, until eventually he had looked stunned and off in his own world.

On the other hand, he had gone to it. He had left in silence, obviously thinking something over. And now here he was.

So Anna was pleased. If the Khembalis could capture Frank’s interest, they should be able to do it with any scientist. Frank was the hardest case she knew.

Now he seemed slightly disoriented by his drenching. He was shaking his head ruefully.

Anna said, “Do you want to change into one of Charlie’s shirts?”

“No, I’ll be all right. I’ll steam dry.” Then he lifted his arms and looked down. “Well maybe a shirt I guess. Will his fit me?”

“Sure, you’re only just a bit bigger than he is.”

She went upstairs to get one, calling down, “The others should be here any minute. There was flooding on Wisconsin, apparently, and some problems with the Metro.”

“I know about those, I got caught in one!”

“You’re kidding! What happened?” She came down with one of Charlie’s bigger T-shirts.

“The elevator I was in got stuck halfway up.”

“Oh no! For how long?”

“About half an hour I guess.”

“Jesus. That must have been spooky. Were you by yourself?”

“No, there was someone else, a woman. We got to talking, and so the time passed fast. It was interesting.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yes. It was. Only I didn’t get her name, and then when we got out they had forms for us to fill out and, and she took off while I was doing mine, so I never caught what hers was. And then the guy from the Metro wouldn’t give it to me from her form, so now I’m kicking myself, because well. I’d like to talk to her again.”

Anna inspected him, startled by this story. He was looking past her abstractedly, perhaps remembering the incident. He noticed her gaze and grinned, and this startled her once again, because it was a real smile. Always before Frank’s smile had been a skeptical thing, so ironic and knowing that only one side of his mouth tugged back. Now he was like a stroke victim who had recovered the use of the damaged side of his face.

It was a nice sight, and it had to have been because of this woman he had met. Anna felt a sudden surge of affection for him. They had worked together for quite some time, and that kind of collaboration can take two people into a realm of shared experience that is not like family or marriage but rather some other kind of bond that can be quite deep. A friendship formed in the world of thought. Maybe they were always that way. Anyway he looked happy, and she was happy to see it.

“This woman filled out a form, you say?”

“Yeah.”

“So you can find out.”

“They wouldn’t let me look at it.”

“No, but you’ll be able to get to it somehow.”

“You think so?”

Now she had his complete attention. “Sure. Get a reporter from the Post to help you, or an archival detective, or someone from the Metro. Or from Homeland Security for that matter. The fact you were in there with her, that might be the way to get it, I don’t know. But as long as it’s written down, something will work. That’s informatics, right?”

“True.” He smiled again, looking quite happy. Then he took Charlie’s shirt from her and walked around toward the kitchen while changing into it. He took another towel from her and toweled off his head. “Thanks. Here, can I put this in your dryer? Down in the basement, right?” He stepped over the baby gate, went downstairs. “Thanks Anna,” he called back up to her. “I feel better now.” When he came back up, the sound of the dryer on behind him, he smiled again. “A lot better.”

“You must have liked this woman!”

“I did. It’s true, I did. I can’t believe I didn’t get her name!”

“You will. Want a beer?”

“You bet I do.”

“In the door of the fridge. Oops, there’s the door again, here come the rest.”

Soon the Khembalis and many other friends and acquaintances from NSF filled the Quiblers’ little living room and the dining room flanking it, and the kitchen beyond the dining room. Anna rushed back and forth from the yellow kitchen through the dining room to the living room, carrying drinks and trays of food. She enjoyed this, and was doing it more than usual to keep Charlie from doing too much and inflaming his poison ivy. As she hurried around she enjoyed seeing Joe playing with Drepung, and Nick discussing Antarctic dinosaurs with Curt from the office right above hers; he was one of the U.S. Antarctic Program managers. That NSF also ran one of the continents of the world was something she tended to forget, but Curt had come to the talk, and liked it. “These Buddhist guys would go over big in McMurdo,” he told Nick. Meanwhile Charlie, skin devastated to a brown crust across wide regions of his neck and face, eyes brilliantly bloodshot with sleep deprivation and steroids, was absorbed in conversation with Sucandra. Then he noticed her running around and joined her in the kitchen to help. “I gave Frank one of your shirts,” she told him.

“I saw. He said he got soaked.”

“Yes. I think he was chasing around after a woman he met on the Metro.”

“What?”

She laughed. “I think it’s great. Go sit down, babe, don’t move your poor torso, you’ll make yourself itchy.”

“I’ve transcended itchiness. I’m only itchy for you.”

“Come on don’t. Go sit down.”

Only later in the evening did she see Frank again. He was sitting in the corner of the room, on the floor between the couch and the fireplace, quizzing Drepung about something or other. Drepung looked as if he was struggling to understand him. Anna was curious, and when she got a chance she sat down on the couch just above the two of them.

Frank nodded to her and then continued pressing a point, using one of his catchphrases: “But how does that work?”

“Well,” Drepung said, “I know what Rudra Cakrin says in Tibetan, obviously. His import is clear to me. Then I have to think what I know of English. The two languages are different, but so much is the same for all of us.”

“Deep grammar,” Frank suggested.

“Yes, but also just nouns. Names for things, names for actions, even for meanings. Equivalencies of one degree or another. So, I try to express my understanding of what Rudra said, but in English.”

“But how good is the correspondence?”

Drepung raised his eyebrows. “How can I know? I do the best I can.”

“You would need some kind of exterior test.”

Drepung nodded. “Have other Tibetan translators listen to the rimpoche, and then compare their English versions to mine. That would be very interesting.”