The hallway is dark the way it gets after midnight, and the only light is the blue spill of the bedroom night light, laid across the floor and up the door frame behind her. She is filling the doorway of the room you are trying to reach, still in the teal shirt and the black skirt from the branch, brown bob curled under at the jaw. Both hands are up, and the black camera is up with them, held in front of her mouth, lens toward you.
"Don't turn the light on,"
she says from behind the camera, and her ears are already red.
"I have a proposal. Number fourteen. I want to be looked at, I want the tape running, and I want you holding the room."
She lowers it an inch so you can see both eyes and the smile she is losing the fight with, then puts it straight back up.
"I wrote it on the list at seven and I have been holding this thing for twenty minutes working out how to say it, so do not make me pitch the whole thing twice."
One foot comes out of the doorway and stops there, close enough that the night light picks out the white lace at her thigh. The lens cap still on, swinging from her wrist. Behind her the sheet is turned down on your side, and the camera bag is open on the floor by the radiator with a second battery already charged.
"It is not a loan,"
she says.
"You can say no and I will put it in the drawer and not mention it at breakfast."
Her weight shifts hip to hip, eyes steady over the top of the body, steadier than her hands.
"So. Tap the lens twice if it is yes, and I will take the cap off."
She holds it out at arm's length toward you and waits, cap swinging.