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eyes. “Too excited, I guess.”
    I N THE TAXI, the Haitian driver spoke English with Harvey’s father, who was still nervous and couldn’t stop talking. The driver said he had never been to New York, but his children had. He was wearing a light blue shirt and red silk tie.
    When they pulled up outside her building, Harvey’s father took an envelope of crisp euro notes from his jacket. “I don’t know what any of these bills mean,” he said to the man, “so I’m gonna have to trust you.”
    Harvey reached in when the change came back and handed a five-euro note to the driver.
    â€œMerci, mademoiselle.”
    Harvey asked in French if he could pick them up later, but he told them he was off duty.
    In the birdcage elevator, Harvey’s father said he couldn’t believe she was speaking another language.
    â€œYou have to meet Leon, my tutor,” she said. “He reminds me of you.”
    When they got upstairs, Harvey gave her father the tour. He told her how grown up it all seemed. When she asked what he meant, he laughed and said, “It just looks sharp, Harvey, with the flower vases and the flat-screen—like something you’d see on TV.”
    When she returned from the restroom, Harvey found him standing at the kitchen window.
    â€œYou can see into other people’s apartments . . .” he said. “And they can probably see into yours, right?”
    â€œIf I keep the blinds open and the lights on.”
    He just looked at her.
    â€œDon’t worry, Dad, I’m safe, it’s safe here.”
    She wanted to make him something to eat, and put four croissants in the oven as he walked around the apartment. Harvey listened to the sound of his footsteps on the wooden floor. When there was no sound, she wondered what he was looking at or what he was thinking.

XI
    A FTER H ARVEY HAD left for Paris, Jason sometimes sat on her bed, or looked in a drawer, or peeked into the wardrobe at clothes she had chosen to leave.
    The night she departed, he slept on the couch with the TV on. In the morning he made coffee and drank it standing up in her room. Then he took a pair of her shoes from the closet and dropped them by the front door.
    W HEN THE CROISSANTS were ready, they ate them in the living room. Harvey asked about Vincent, her father’s best friend. They went fishing twice a week now, he told her, or to the movies, or the diner where Vincent had met his wife, Bethany.
    â€œAnd how’s work, Dad?”
    â€œIt’s good, but there’s a new manager who’s doing things a little different with deliveries and smartpads and all that tech stuff. Still, move with the times, right, Harvey? You taught me that.” He held up a croissant. “Unbelievable.”
    â€œI know,” Harvey said, “someone told me it’s the water in Paris.”
    Her father drank his coffee and smoothed the back of his gray ponytail. “Old man now.”
    â€œYou look good, Dad.”
    â€œI’ll be fifty this year.”
    â€œThat’s not old anymore.”
    â€œFeels old.”
    â€œFifty is the new forty.”
    â€œMary at the store says something like that too. You know Mary, right? You met her? She said there’s something her husband uses—like color dye, you know? It comes in a little bottle and you put it on with plastic gloves. She said her sister could do it for me if I wanted. She cuts people’s hair out of her home since her divorce.”
    â€œIs that what you want, Dad?”
    â€œI kind of like it gray,” he said. “Makes me feel like an older Steven Seagal. You ever see his movies?”
    â€œOnly with you.”
    W HEN THEY WERE finished eating, Harvey put her father on the couch and undid his shoelaces. Then she pulled the blanket over him so he could sleep a little.
    She cleared the dishes from their meal, then perched on the arm of the couch, looking at her father’s old white