“Who will I talk to?” Ilka said to her friends in New York and started to cry. Her friends waited for her to finish. Leina, who sat beside Ilka, patted her arm.

                  Herbert said, “Winterneet lives in Concordance.”

                  Ilka said, “He did them a lecture series the year before his Nobel Prize.”

                  Jules said, “I knew this fellow — his brother-in-law used to play golf with the best friend of Winterneet’s lawyer. I’ll see if I still have his number.”

                  “This is your chance to discover the real America,” Ilka’s friends said to her. Ilka was a talker. Her friends were familiar with her refugee anecdotes; the friends of longest standing had seen her through her New York anecdotes, and she had seen them through theirs.

                  Ilka said, “I’ve got this theory that refugees don’t make discoveries. When discoverers finish discovering they retire home to Lisbon or London. It took me a decade to settle Manhattan and now I’m supposed to discover Concordance.” Ilka started crying again and said, “Bet you there are no refugee discoverers.”

                  “I have a theory,” Ilka said to Jacquelyn, “that there are not refugee discoverers, or did I tell you that already?”

                  “That’s alright,” said Jacquelyn. “Go on.”

                  Ilka practiced her theory on her friends, and on her circle of acquaintances, and on the circle that surrounded her acquaintances — the people one knew in New York. The thing acquired shape and developed a skin. “It took a decade to find the right drawer to keep my spoons in and turn on the bathroom light without groping and now I’m supposed to emigrate to Concordance! I don’t know anybody in Concordance!”

                  Everybody said, “Winterneet lives in Concordance,” and Ilka always said, “He did them a lecture series the year before his Nobel Prize.”

                  Ilka was astonished at the number of people she knew who knew people or knew people who knew people in Concordance, and they wrote down names and numbers for people to call. A man whose name Ilka had forgotten so often she could never ask him what it was gave her the number of the woman he had dated in Ann Arbor, who would love Ilka, whom Ilka would love. “Tell her I told you to give her a call.”

                  “Can you just give people calls?” asked Ilka.

                  “You’ll come and visit!” Ilka said to her mother. “I’ll come to New York for the holidays.”