The fire had burned lower by the time he spoke again. The room had softened around them, the shadows gentled, and Elena had stopped being aware of the wig in the specific acute way she had been aware of it since she walked through the door. It had receded into the background of the evening, one more layer of the constructed woman she had arrived as and was, piece by piece, setting down.
"May I ask you something," he said.
The formality of it — may I, from a man who asked questions the way other men issued directives — stopped her. "Yes."
He looked at her for a moment in the low light. His eyes moved briefly to the wig — the straight black fall of it, jaw-length, not quite her — and back to her face. When he spoke his voice was quieter than it had been all evening. Not softer, precisely.
