Chapter 2: A Time That Suits

That sounded like an answer to a question Ada Mercer had not asked him. It also sounded as though he had gone back to discuss her work.

He stopped trying when his own stop came into view.

In his apartment kitchen, he put bread in the toaster and set a plate beside it. His hat lay on the table, making a dark, damp crescent on the wood. He moved it onto a chair, then wiped the mark with his sleeve.

The toaster sprang before he had found anything to put on the bread. He stood with the fridge open, looking at a covered bowl and a jar whose label faced the wall. From somewhere beyond the kitchen came the dull knock of a pipe.

He hummed the piano note under his breath. It was only one sound in his throat; he could not put the small moving roughness back into it.

Perhaps he could ask about the lever. Just the movement of her hand, without the porch or the appointment or what anyone wanted. He took out the butter and shut the fridge with his hip.

But then she might ask why he had waited.

He buttered the toast after it had cooled. The bread bent under the knife. He ate it standing at the counter, listening without meaning to for movement in the apartment next door.

The stairwell light showed beneath Ada Mercer’s door while she was folding the cloth around her tuning lever. She had brought the bag from the entrance to the kitchen after her tea; now she carried it back, ready for the next outing. Through the door she caught a scrape, then a sound that might have been a key.

She set the bag down and opened the door.

Eli Finch stood beside his own doorway with a tied rubbish bag. His hat was on, though his coat hung open.

“Going out?” she asked.

He lifted the bag slightly.

“Just this.”

“When you’re back, there’s something I wanted to ask.”

He glanced toward the stairs. “I can now.”

“Put that out first.”

He went down, the bag brushing the banister. She stayed at her threshold. The corridor smelled of someone’s cooked onions, and a pale scuff crossed the wall where something bulky had been carried past. She rubbed it with her thumb. Nothing came away.

When he returned, he stopped a little farther from her door than usual.

“I got my hat,” he said.

“So I see.”

“I left it at Nora Bell’s. I went back.”

She looked at the hat properly. There was a strand of pale fluff caught above his ear.

“You could have left it until Thursday.”

“I wanted it.”