#chance-encounter

#chance-encounter

The Iraqi student walked up to me and told me he'd arranged an interview for me with the head of the electron microscope unit at Columbia. Because he'd gone to the trouble of setting it up, I went to the interview but straight away told my interviewer that I didn't have a visa, so I was probably wasting her time. In typical New York fashion a city where anything feels possible she said: We can make that happen. When can you start?

An old man leans on a stone jetty nearby, his fishing pole perched on the wall and angled out over the lake, the line disappearing down into the water, a perfect triangle. The window shades in the house are drawn. The Clooneys just arrived yesterday. The house is right there, visible from the water and from the old man's fishing spot: a large, elegant rectangle built in the eighteenth century with lovely tall windows,