Chapter 2: A Time That Suits

He remembered the note thinning beneath Ada Mercer’s hand. First the small trouble in it, then the smoothness, then the trouble again. On the bus he had tried to hear the difference without humming aloud. Here, with the house open behind its owner, it was harder to remember exactly how obvious it had been.

“She wrote it down,” he said.

“Yes. Of course.”

A gust pressed the door toward its frame. Nora Bell braced her foot against the bottom. He reached for the edge, and for a moment they held it together.

“I only mean a check is still a visit,” she said. “She’s put the time aside. We’d pay for the appointment, naturally. Even if there’s nothing to adjust.”

He watched a drop of water travel from her pushed-up cuff to her wrist.

“You could tell her that.”

“I could.”

She said it readily enough, but did not turn toward the telephone or ask him to wait while she found her own.

“Sometimes things sound more complicated when you ring specially,” she added.

He knew that much. Knocking on the door next to his could make a small question into something he would have to stand there and finish.

“It would be useful to have her here,” Nora Bell said. “That’s all. And you, if you’re free.”

The addition was quick. He could not tell whether she had remembered he was there or had meant to include him from the start. Neither possibility helped him decide what to say.

“If she goes, I’ll carry the bag.”

The answer left his part small enough to recognise.

“Thank you.”

“But I don’t make the appointments.”

“No. I know.”

She looked down at their hands on the door, then moved her foot so he could let go. Before it closed she said, “You’ve had to come all this way for a hat.”

“It’s all right.”

He put both hands into his pockets. There was nothing else he needed to collect, and no reason to go into the piano room and press the key again.

At the gate he glanced back. She was still behind the glass. He lifted his hand, and she lifted hers, a small farewell made larger by his having looked.

On the return bus he kept his hat on. The window beside him had a greasy mark at forehead height. He watched the light from shops pass through it, spreading each lit sign into a blur, and tried out a sentence he might say next door.

She says you should come even if it’s all right.