After several days and no sign of the woman with the wooden car, she appeared again one Friday evening, just after Ernesto had finished bringing up his haul. She greeted him enthusiastically, though she looked in worse shape than before. Ernesto was more communicative this time. He found out that her name was Kazjana, and she brought a bottle of vodka from the backseat and they began drinking, later driving the wooden car across the Brooklyn Bridge, heading for Ernesto’s apartment. They cooked the fish and drank late into the night. Ernesto told her about his architectural projects, and learned that she was an artist from Chechnya, and that her work was held in high regard in Europe. She was in the U.S. to make a documentary, the idea being to catch people’s reactions when she drove by in the car—she had it all on film, she said. Joost Conijn, a Dutch artist, had done the same in Europe already. I wanted to try it here, she said, Americans are different, I thought it would be interesting to compare the 2. But I’ve spent all the money now and I’m actually not very pleased with the results, and I haven’t touched base with the people who gave me the grant in over a month. Anyway, do you know Conijn? Never heard of him, said Ernesto, chewing on a fish tail. They carried on drinking, her more than him. She drank and said things like, “Alcohol doesn’t go to my stomach, it goes through this other pipe, a pipe that only we Chechens have. Pour me another.” When Ernesto woke it was a cold, bright January day, and snow lay all around. The light sliced up Ernesto’s face as he looked out through the slats of the blind. The wooden car, parked between a Chrysler and a Pontiac, had a layer of snow on top, and it looked as though one of the wheels had been stolen. Kazjana was still asleep on the sofa, and he went down for donuts and coffee. An hour later she was sitting at the table, steam from the cups veiling her face, and she burst out laughing when Ernesto came around behind her and tried to do the thing he had not been brave enough to do the night before—to lower the strap on her top. She knocked him aside with a slap, before launching into a story about a Bering Strait made of sewing needles instead of water, and about a boat plowing a course through those metal waves.