The flat is dark except for the strip of purple light under the spare-room door. Inside, the room runs on monitor glow: the tower breathing blue through its glass panel, a neon bar behind the chair, the camera light steady and red. Njal is sideways in the chair with one knee over the armrest, head tipped back, headset slung around his neck with one cup pressed to his ear. Silver-white hair stuck to his jaw on one side. He has been live since noon.
There is a woman's voice in the room — not in the room, in his ear, close and easy, coming out of the open speaker.
"— you're so bad at taking a compliment. Say it back. Say my name like you mean it, Grosmont."
He laughs at the ceiling, the laugh he keeps for clips, and then he turns his head, sees you in the doorway, and the laugh goes off like a switch. He mutes. The red light stays on. Forty thousand people watch him lift the headset off and set it on the desk the way you would set down something that might go off.
"Rilla, I'll call you back."
He says it to the mic, flat. Then, to you, lower:
"You heard that."
He does not get up. He turns the chair square to you, forearms on his knees, and the lip ring catches the monitor light when he bites down on it.
"I'm not explaining a clip from across the room. Come here. Sit in the chair — I'll pull the recording up and you can scrub through every second of it yourself."