This block was even more rundown than Bunker Street. Most of the rowhouses were boarded up, and bits of trash flocked the gutters. The café, when they arrived there, didn’t even have a real sign-just PeeWeEs scrawled in downward-slanting whitewash across the window, above a pale avocado tree struggling up from a grapefruit-juice tin on the sill. Liam would never have dared to enter such a place by himself, but Eunice yanked open the baggy screen door without hesitation. He followed her into a small front room-clearly a parlor, once, with dramatic black-and-gold wallpaper and a faded, rose-colored linoleum floor stippled to look like shag carpeting. Three mismatched tables all but filled the space. Through a doorway to the rear, Liam heard pots clanking and water running.

“Hello!” Eunice called, and she pulled out the nearest chair and plunked herself down on it. Liam took the seat across from her. His own chair seemed to have come from a classroom-it was that familiar blend of blond wood and tan-painted steel-but Eunice’s was part of a dinette set, upholstered in bright-yellow vinyl.

“Do you want anything to eat?” Eunice asked him.

“No thanks,” he said-addressing, at the last minute, the large woman in a housecoat who appeared in the rear doorway. “Just coffee, please.”

“I’ll have coffee and a Tastykake,” Eunice told the woman.

“Huh,” the woman said, and she vanished again. Eunice smiled after her. Either she was admirably at ease anywhere or she suffered from a total lack of discrimination; Liam couldn’t decide which.

He hunched forward in his seat as soon as they were alone. (He had to make the most of this one chance.) Keeping his tone casual, he asked, “Why is it that you’re needed only for transitions?”

“Oh, well,” Eunice said vaguely. “I’m sort of a… facilitator. Sort of, I don’t know, a social facilitator, maybe you could say.”

“You remind Mr. Cope of appointments and such.”

“Well, yes.”

She picked up an ashtray. Liam hadn’t seen an ashtray on a table in years. This one was a triangle of black plastic, with Flagg Family Crab House, Ocean City, Maryland stamped in white around the rim. She turned it over and examined the bottom.

“Boy, could I ever use reminding,” Liam said. “Especially when it comes to names. If I’m, for instance, walking down the street with someone and another person pops up that I know, and I have to all at once make the introductions… well, I’m at a loss. Both people’s names just fly clean out of my head.”

“Have you ever been involved in any community leadership?” Eunice asked him.

“Pardon?”

“Like, had to explain a project or something at a meeting?”

The large woman reappeared just then, scuffing across the linoleum in rubber flip-flops and carrying a tray. She set down two Styrofoam cups of coffee and a piece of yellow cake wrapped in cellophane.

“Thank you,” Liam said. He waited until she was gone before he told Eunice, “No, I don’t enjoy public speaking.”

“I’m just trying to think what qualities we should stress on your application.”

“Oh, well, I-”

“You have been speaking to classes, all these years.”

“That’s not the same, somehow.”

“But suppose there was a meeting of people objecting to something. And you were asked to make a speech telling them why they were wrong. I’m thinking you would be good at that!”

When she got going this way, he could understand how he had first taken her for a much younger woman. She was leaning toward him eagerly, holding on to her Styrofoam cup with both hands, oblivious to the bra strap that had slid down her left arm. (Her bra would be one of those no-nonsense white cotton items, circle-stitched, in a super-duper size. He could detect its outline through her blouse.) He shifted his gaze to his coffee. Judging from the strand of bubbles skimming the surface, he wondered if it might be instant. “I’m just not a very public person,” he said.

“If we could point up the classroom angle… like, stress your persuasive abilities. Every teacher has persuasive abilities!”

“You really think so,” he said noncommittally.

Then, “Tell me, Eunice. Have you been working for Mr. Cope long?”

“What? Oh, no. Just a few months.”

She sat back and began unwrapping her cake. He seized his advantage. “I like your attitude toward him,” he said.

“How do you mean, my attitude?”

“I mean, you’re helpful but respectful. You allow him his dignity.”

“Well, that’s not so hard.” She took a bite of her cake.

“Not for you, obviously. You must have a knack for it.”

She shrugged. “Want to hear something funny?” she asked when she had swallowed. “My major was biology.”

“Biology!”

“But I couldn’t find a job in biology. Mostly, I’ve been unemployed. My parents think I’m a failure.”

“Well, they’re wrong,” he said. He experienced a kind of rush to his head. He had not felt this strongly in years. “Good Lord, you’re the diametrical opposite of a failure! If only you knew how you seem from outside, so efficient and discreet!”

Eunice looked surprised.

“At least,” he said hastily, “that’s how it struck me when I saw you in front of the Cope building.”

She said, “Why, thank you, Liam.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I do work really hard at this job. Not everybody appreciates that.”

“That’s because your purpose is to make it not look hard,” he said.

“Oh, you’re right!”

He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. Yes, instant, beyond a doubt, and barely lukewarm besides.

“It isn’t only names I was talking about,” he told her. “When I said I could use reminding, I mean.” He shot her a glance. “The fact is, I was hit on the head by a burglar a few weeks ago. Since then I seem to be suffering a bit of amnesia.”

“Amnesia!” she said. “You’ve forgotten your identity?”

“No, no, nothing so extreme as that. It’s just that I’ve forgotten the experience of being hit. I have no recollection of it.”

He waited for her to ask, as everyone did, why he would want such a recollection, but she just made a tsk-ing sound.

“I guess I should be glad,” he told her. “I’m better off forgetting, right? But that’s not how I feel about it.”

“Well, of course it’s not,” she said. “You want to know what happened.”

“Yes, but there’s more to it than that. Even if someone could tell me what happened-even if they told me every detail-I would still feel… I don’t know…”

“You would still feel something was missing,” Eunice said.

“Exactly.”

“Something you yourself have lived through, and it ought to belong to you now, not just to someone who tells you about it. But it doesn’t.”

“That’s it exactly!”

He was grateful to hear it put into words. He felt a sudden flood of affection for her-for the errant bra strap, even, and the headlamp look of her eyes behind her big glasses.

“Eunice,” he said consideringly.

She paused in the midst of licking a dab of frosting off one finger.

“Properly speaking,” he said, “it should be ‘You-nike-ee.’ That’s the way the Greeks would have said it.”

“‘You-niss is bad enough,” she told him. “I’ve always hated my name.”

“Oh, it’s a fine name. It means ‘victorious.’”

She set down her cake. She sat up straighter. “So…” she said, “um, tell me, is your… wife a teacher too?”

“Wife? I’m not married. The Romans would have said ‘You-nice-ee.’ But I can understand how that wouldn’t work in English.”

“Liam?” Eunice said. “I really meant it when I said you should apply for a job.”

“Oh. Well, actually, since I’m sixty years old-”

“They can’t object to that! Age discrimination’s illegal.”

“Yes, but I meant-”

“Is it the résumé you’re worried about? I’ll help you. I’m really good at résumés,” she said, and she gave a little laugh. “I’ve certainly had enough practice.”