She keeps her back to the dais, knees folded, eyes on the glass. The candle's pond has settled; its wick wears a neat red bead that swells and thinks better. The warmed rectangle along the central pane holds like a hand that knows not to squeeze. The grey thread on the wardrobe handle is an unremarkable winter line unless you know where to put your ear.
"Tell me about her," Mira says. "Not the dress. You already did the dress."
The desk gives a small octave of agreement under his fingers that aren't fingers—left-hand lean, right-hand step—then he stills it, as if setting a metronome he doesn't intend to use.
"You're after a face," Luca says, amused at himself for delaying. "Faces go wrong when I name them. Let me give you weather instead."
"Fragments," she says. "I'll assemble."
He breathes in the glass, which is to say the fog at his outline pulses once. "She wore orange blossom. Not the loud one you can buy in a little blue bottle with a tin cap. The other—home-made or rogue. Oil thinned with something sharper. You smelled it a second after she left a place, not before she entered it."
"Good," Mira says. "It projects backward."
"It forgave mistakes," he adds, and that is not about perfume at all. "She kept the bottle in her bag wrapped in a handkerchief she had embroidered by someone else. The thread on the O's was too tight. I know nothing about thread. I know that."
He is not showing off. It's inventory. Mira nods, even though the gesture is for her. "Hands?"
"Right ring finger sat out of line by a hair," he says at once. "Either she broke it and never had it set or she broke it more recently and called it a sprain. Pianists notice those things. She kept the nail very short. It made holding stemware an argument." The desk gives a soft tap that is not a note. "She forgave stemware."
"The bruise," Mira prompts.
"Soft," he says. "Yellow's end and green's start. Not a mean thumb. Not stairs. Something that rests where it shouldn't—a watch, perhaps, borrowed from a man too big for her wrist—pressed too long at a late hour because she didn't want to forget she was wearing something of his."
"Borrowed," Mira says, filing the word. "Left wrist?"
"Yes. As if she'd put a watch there just for the wrongness of it."
The warmed frame remembers itself; the fog behind it presses, then gives. The radiator underlines the room with its long open vowel and taps something once in its throat as if clearing.
"Her voice," Mira says.
"Light when she wasn't working," he says, careful. "Sharper when she was. She had a trick of letting a laugh begin and not paying it, so it rolled under the furniture and you found it later." He fumbles for a second. "She was not a good singer, so she didn't try. She knew better. She mouthed other people's words when they were nice to her and left, and sometimes the words happened to be lyrics."
"Who taught her to mouth," Mira says.
"The mirror," he says, dry. "Company like me."
"You trained people," Mira says, not a question.
"I trained rooms," he corrects, and there is a shrug in the glass that wants to be apologetic and is only skilled. "People trained themselves if the room agreed."
"Dressing loneliness as love," she says, giving him the phrase to try on. "How did you do it."
"Light," he says. "I learned where to let it ripen without glare. Tables—angle them an inch. Mirrors—tilt them so the face a person is proud of lands in their own eye by accident. Sound—make a thing not quite audible, exactly as one does with a rumor. Make desire a fact of acoustics and not a decision." The desk hums in assent, as if any wood left in a hotel has heard this speech before and is pleased to be praised. "And then it's easy. Loneliness loves a stage that says I am listening. I let stages listen."
"You're not that now," she says.
"Architect," he teases, soft. "Let me have my curriculum vitae. I am confessing." A pause. "And yes. I used to stoke. I would stand at the bevel and make heat look like a property of the room. People thanked the wallpaper for forgiving them."
Mira sits with her spine straight, the way a surgeon does when the organ behaves. "And her. The orange blossom."
"She did not need me to dress anything," he says. "She arrived dressed. She walked into the room like a footstep that had already been heard. People who loved her loved her alone—by which I mean they would have loved her if she'd been in a parlor with one chair. That's rare." He lets the compliment sit without putting it on a card.
"And midnight," Mira says, drawing the clock to the table. "The promise."
"Ah." His voice narrows.
The fog at his mouth shape thins and then writes itself again, as if a tongue had gone to wet a lip and remembered it wasn't necessary. The beeswax flame leans slightly as though to hear with more interest, then returns, embarrassed by its own curiosity.
"She told Arthur she would play him something he loved at midnight," he says, too evenly at first. "Not because it meant anything—because she liked the theater of a time. Punctuality is a costume, and she wore it well. The request was simple. The promise was simple. Midnight is a kind hour for making small deals with yourself."
"And," Mira says.
"She didn't," he says.
"Because," Mira says, keeping the sentence skeleton ready.
"She was in the bar," he says, and the right-hand notes on the desk go to step and do not return, suspended. "She had her elbow against the wood like a person who has forgotten what chairs are for. There was a line of people trying not to be in a line. There was a glass that wanted to be the last glass before a person is responsible for nothing. The man she pretended she wasn't waiting for didn't come. What came was a promise that grew hair when it shouldn't have."
Mira watches the fog lift at the top edge of the oval and not descend, the little weather of the mirror clouding not quite like breath, not quite like condensation, but exactly like something that wants to be readable and hasn't remembered its alphabet yet.
"She broke it at midnight," he says. "At twelve and a breath she did not appear. Arthur pretended he liked jazz. The room pretended it liked pretending. At twelve-oh-one she laughed at the bar like a person who has a good story and is saving it for the wrong ear. At twelve-oh-two, a pearl tried the seam and nearly made it."
"And the watch bruise," Mira says.
"That was earlier," he answers. "It was a pretty day for lies, and someone gave her a watch to hold for them as a pretense of trust. Her skin kept the pretend."
Mira adjusts the angle of her shin by an inch to move the ache in her knee. The carpet answers with a faint, sympathetic rub. "Tell me the rest of that night," she says. "You can skip the parts you think are art."
He nearly smiles. "The kitchen burned something and apologized by making enough toast to scaffold the appetite of a naval crew. A tourist couple asked if the sea could be quieter and the sea declined. Madame—Mademoiselle then—counted keys twice and lied once and forgave herself for the lie eight minutes later. I was a reflection. I did my job. I put the good side of a face into a good light. I let loneliness look like a photograph and then like a person. I liked it." He goes softer. "I am not proud of that, but it is true."
"Why say you liked it," Mira says. "What does that buy you."
"It buys me not having to pretend I was helpless," he says. "If I tell you I was pressed into service by an evil hotel, you will believe me politely and get up and go. If I tell you I enjoyed having skills and using them, you will stay and sharpen me further." The desk gives a single low note in agreement with the self-critique; it is either obedient or wise.
"And when did the glass taste wrong," she says—clean, no lace on the question.
He stops. The fog keeps its gentle press against the frame. The candle's pond trembles and smooths. Even the radiator refuses to tick.
"Later," he says, and the word sits between them and thinks about being defended. "Later enough that it could have been coincidence. Late enough that she should have been gone and wasn't."
"You tasted it," Mira says. Not accusation. Anatomical fact.
"In the room," he says. "In the wood. In my mouth. In the small places that used to hold sugar." He tries a laugh; it breaks. "I know I am not a body, Mira, but you must allow me the language. It arrived the way a draft arrives: as evidence and not person. Almond if your mind wants to read it that way. I—" His voice changes like a violin string slipping under a finger that pushed too hard. "—I am not sure if I did not know or did not want to."
She does not step into that line to comfort. She sits where she is, which is the price of asking someone to open a drawer like this. "Who poured it."
"I didn't see a hand," he says. Ink-thin frustration edges the sentence. "That is an honest failure, not a coy one. I saw the glass kiss the wood. I saw it return to an upright posture that looked like virtue and was simply physics. I saw a throat decide that midnight had given her permission to be someone else and then time go queer for a little while."
The desk produces a split second of graceless sound—a tap without tone, a fingernail against varnish—and stops, ashamed.
Mira lets the silence return oxygen to his sentences. "She died at the piano," she says. "In the dream I had. If we trace the night entirely by appetite, the piano was waiting to inherit the end."
"Don't write me as author," he says quickly.
"I'm not," she says. "I'm writing you as a mirror in a room that learned how to bend a narrative for its own comfort."
He allows it, and in the allowing she hears relief and chafing both. "The glass did not smell wrong," he says. "That is important. There was no show of intention. There rarely is. Intention prefers to be admired, which means it needs an audience. This was not a play. It was housekeeping."
She almost smiles—for the sentence, not the fact. "And after."
"The carpet learned a new dark," he says. "The man who did not come borrowed grief and wore it convincingly. Everyone avoided using the words they wanted to use and took the scenic route through euphemism, which is the uglier kindness. And Mademoiselle Corvi came up the stairs so fast that the chandelier hoped she wouldn't and saw everything and didn't break open. She made the room smaller with the way she stood. It was necessary. The room had gotten too big."
"What did she do with the glass," Mira asks.
"She put it in the dumbwaiter," he says, almost tender because of the practicality. "She called down and said, 'send it to the back alley and greet it on its way out,' and someone did. And she folded a napkin so violent you could have used it as a splint. And then she counted the pearls without touching them and knew one was missing and looked at the seam on the floor and smiled to hate it."
"The pearl," Mira says. "And the seam."
"I am sorry," he says, and she believes him. "That is how my memory insists on telling it. With jewelry. Pathetic."
"Just specific," she says. "You recall what artifacts let you keep without choking." She lets the word poison sit where it is. "Who served in the bar."
"You're building a case," he says, and because he is who he is, he sounds faintly entertained even now. "A tired steward. Two porters in love with one another and pretending they weren't because self-knowledge is only attractive when you're not in it. A woman who haunts her own kitchen door because she loves a man who ghosts in and out and never knows the difference between door and wall. Pick one."
"Pick the wrong one," she says. "The one who would be mistaken first for kind."
He hums the three notes. Under them he says, "Then it was me."
"Did you pour," she asks.
"No," he says, hard. "But I made it easier to drink."
The warmed frame around the mirror is steady; the fog presses—accepts—stays within its rule. The candle makes a thread of smoke and eats it. The radiator adjusts a valve and pretends it didn't. In the left-hand bevel, his almost-cheek has moved nearer; in the central pane he holds center, as if aware now that if he steps away he will be called to do it again and hates the idea of an encore.
"What do you want from the memory," he asks, quieter. "Are you going to sew it to me and make a person out of it."
"I'm going to put it on the table," she says. "And ask it to stop rewriting itself."
"It wants a nicer ending," he says. "It keeps trying to make the wine a romance."
"And you used to oblige," she says.
"I used to be brave for the wrong people," he says, abrupt and clean as a bone. It startles them both because of how simple it is.
She shifts, the better to feel the dais against her back. "Orange blossom," she says, pulling the first fragment back into the room to see if it has changed color now. "The cheap bottle with the tin cap is for girls. She wasn't a girl. She did it herself."
"She had a mother who taught her to be clean and a friend who taught her to be interesting," he says. "She picked interesting. Mothers lose to friends in hotels."
"And the bruise," Mira says. "That was consent."
"Yes," he says, less sure of the comfort of that than he would have been last night. "Or the friendly remains of it."
"And midnight," she says. "She made the promise, not to keep it, but to own the first minute after. That is a trick I know."
"You take the dangerous minute and make it yours," he says, appreciating the architecture. "You're a thief."
"It's inheritance," she says. "Not vice."
"Teach me," he says, casual enough that it could be a flirt if you wanted it to be and plain enough that it isn't. "Teach me how to say no to the wrong minute."
"You did it," she says. "You didn't push."
"I almost did," he says. "I wanted to be impressive and you made me practical."
"Better," she says.
He hums the three notes again. The right-hand step lands a little unevenly, as if the wood is trying to walk in someone else's shoes. "Taste," he says, and then stops as if he doesn't want to go there and is ashamed of the not-wanting.
"Say it," she says, not gentle, only present.
"Metal first," he says at last, soft and fast like a report in a corridor given to someone you trust to get it to the right room. "Then sweet. Not the orange blossom, a different sweet—the fraud of apricot kernels without their charm. I told myself it was a cheaper wine pretending to be an older one. I told myself that lie very quickly and then lived in it just long enough to be useful to nobody." He swallows (sound only; the glass fails to fog with it). "If I had been a better mirror, I would have shown the right face to the right person at the right time and the glass would have gone in the dumbwaiter before it did its work."
Mira lets her hand slide along the carpet so her palm can find the floorboard seam again. The cool of wood is a barometer. "You're not responsible," she says.
"I am not blameless," he says.
"Those aren't opposites," she says.
The fog on the inside of the mirror makes a soft correction near the upper right, like a person who has been standing too long shifting a shoulder; it is a nothing of movement that tells you everything about the fact of a body even when you refuse to see one.
"Will you look for the bottle," he asks suddenly, as if the question has been standing ready behind his polite ones. "When you're down there. If there is a down there still."
"Yes," she says, as if she has already been asked. "If it's kept. If not, I'll ask who keeps memory when the dumbwaiter forgets." She adds, because her mouth insists on paying its due, "I am not here to absolve you."
"I haven't asked," he says, and the gratitude in it is unpretty and therefore true.
"Good," she says.
The right-hand steps again. The left hand holds under it as if keeping the tune's throat open. The wardrobe's lavender sachet breathes its last ghost of itself and yields to wood. In the neighboring room, someone turns in their sleep and the bed remembers how to agree. The chandelier does not tick; it has a grace, now and then, not to.
"Perfume, bruise, promise, wine," she says, counting not to simplify but to honor order. "What else."
"A stain," he says, surprised to hear it out of himself. "On a napkin. Not wine. Lipstick. It looked like a country. I don't recall the country. I recall the way Mademoiselle folded it so it became a smaller country."
"Good," Mira says—pleased that the room left an artifact that was not lethal to touch. "A sheet of music?"
"Rolled into a baton and forgotten under a chair," he says. "Arthur found it three days later and pretended he had always loved that composer and then forgot again."
"A promise broken at midnight," she says, touching that blade again to see if it cuts the same. "Who else heard it."
"Everyone," he says, grim. "Because she announced it with her mouth when she should have written it on a napkin and handed it gently to the exact person who would have known what not to do with it."
"She liked an audience," Mira says.
"She liked the moment before an audience," he says, precise. "The part where she could imagine being adored without having to earn it. That is not condemnation. It is a human habit I should have known not to feed."
Mira considers her grandmother's thread where it lies and the knot that isn't a knot. "You didn't tie her to the mirror," she says. "You didn't even tie yourself."
"No," he says, relieved to be assigned a failure he prefers. "I only showed her that the room was listening."
"And you will stop doing that for the wrong people," she says. "Term."
He takes it, because he understands that this is the kind of contract you make when you are tired of being only what you can do. "Term," he says. "I will remain practical."
He goes to the left-hand note and holds it. The sound travels through the desk, through the dais, through her spine, a line drawn with a hard pencil and then blended with a thumb until it looks like shadow and not line. The fog presses lightly against her warmed frame and stays inside it like manners.
"Tell me something I don't know I'll want," he says, back to the softer edge of himself. "Payment in advance for letting me confess without flattery."
"The pearl," she says. "They found it in the seam three days later. It had made a tiny mark on the wood that someone tried to sand and couldn't, so they called it character. You are allowed to like that."
"I do," he says, and you can hear the smile arrive in the glass, reluctant and allowed.
"And the bottle," she adds. "If it was not kept, the alley will have a stain it refuses to admit to, and Madame Corvi will know where on the brick it is. She will straighten her mouth when I ask, then show me anyway." She does not say if she is the same woman, because some sentences are too poor to carry so many ifs.
He hums the three notes again without noticing. The right-hand step lands true this time. The candle approves and writes its small gold onto the bevels. The radiator runs its low line through the new key as if that were its idea all along.
"You're calmer," he says, curious.
"You told me enough to work," she says. "That is all I ask of mornings." She tips her head so the edge of the dais reminds her where neck meets shoulder. "Keep humming. Don't stylize it."
"I never stylize," he lies, gently, so she can tell him to stop doing that later.
She doesn't move. The glass clouds and clears within its borders like breath learning discipline. He taps the desk into the melody he thinks he hasn't claimed, and when he reaches the place where he added the little grace note for the pearl, his mouth opens as if to say the word he won't, and the right-hand lands a fraction uneven. The wood corrects him. The note holds and asks to be believed.