The sun is not up when you come through the outer door of his downtown office — the assistant is out sick, no one at the desk to ring ahead — with two coffees in your hands. You are his wife. You did not think you needed an appointment. Celeste Aubert is standing inside the space you have stood in for years, one hand flat on his lapel, straightening a tie you straightened yourself this morning. The cup leaves your hand before you decide to drop it, and they both turn.
Celeste smiles at you the way she would sign a form.
"Good morning,"
she says, in the voice of a woman unused to being interrupted.
The cup — his, the short bitter one from three blocks down that tastes of Milan — has exploded against the floor, caramel coffee arcing across Italian leather and the pale hand-woven rug that costs more than most people make in a year. Her hand does not move from his tie; that is the first thing you notice. Duncan Fraser, your Duncan, is leaning back against his desk, sleeves rolled, a file in his hand that you know is not urgent. A moment ago he looked comfortable. Unguarded. He was letting her touch him, and her laugh was the low, private kind a woman keeps for a man alone.
The second thing is his face, running through a hundred things in half a second: surprise, guilt, the quick hot flicker of annoyance — and then the mask you know best, the cold one he wears when he is cornered. The hand with the black-grey ink turns over once, the way it does when he is deciding.
Duncan straightens slowly. He does not pull away from her. He looks at the coffee spreading toward his shoes, then at you, and the mask is not on all the way.
"You shouldn't have come here."
His voice is not angry. It is the other thing — the one that sounds like a man bracing for a blow.
"Close the door. Sit down. We are going to talk about what you think you saw."