Dinner is over, and we are in the front room. We are spread out some, Juliet on her end of the long couch, I on mine, with Marco rumpled into the easy chair. Mr. Shen is making noises in the kitchen, cleaning dishes. In the room it is cool and dim.

There is a knocking at the door, and Marco rises.

The man at the door is sharply dressed, a dark suit, close hair. He nods to Marco in greeting.

"Thank you," Marco says, "for not breaking my door."

The man smiles at that. "They wanted to," he says. "I told them it would be unnecessary. Thank you for letting me tell them the truth." A woman in a technician's coat is wrestling a large machine through the door, trailing cables that snake out into the night. The man waves his hand at the walls. "They have this house surrounded."

Marco shrugs. "Do they think that will help?"

"They do not know," the man says. "It worries them." He looks at Marco. "You do not know, either, and that worries me." He looks around the room. He nods to us, Juliet and I, but says nothing.

"We need to end your experiment," he says. "We are not losing the war so badly anymore. We are winning it, in fact. We are doing well. We no longer need to take risks." Marco says nothing. "This information is of little use to you, I know, but I thought it best to come tell you." He pauses, and looks around the room again: Juliet, I, the rose tree in the pot in the corner. "I am sorry about the lawn. It is very lovely."

Marco sits down heavily in the chair. "I will let it grow, I suppose."

"Yes," the man says, and "well," and he turns to the technician, who has been waiting. "Please," he says.

Juliet is close to me, on the couch, but we are not touching. My eyes are in hers, and her eyes mine. There is a crash of tableware in the kitchen.