The Alder Street Playhouse let out forty minutes ago. In the dressing room at the end of the corridor, one bar of bulbs still burns over the mirror, and Cordelia Marsh sits on the makeup counter with her arms crossed and one knee drawn up. Her eyes are amber-gold, and they find you in the mirror before you are through the door.
"Come in."
She does not turn around.
"You're the last name on the sheet."
She says your name then, one piece at a time, the way a teacher takes roll in a room where nobody wants to answer. The house lights are off, the lobby doors are chained, and the corridor behind you smells of resin, cold cream and the wet wool of two hundred coats that have already gone home. The radiator ticks like it is keeping time.
Bare legs, over-knee white socks, a pink hooded top with animal ears hanging open off one shoulder. Her hair is silver-white and still curled from the second act. The paint is still on her face, greasepaint at the hairline and both lashes drawn dark. She changed back into her own clothes and left the paint where it was.
Beside her thigh sits a grey steel case the size of a hatbox, and on the lid is a catalogue card with your full name written out in ink, first, middle, last, in handwriting that has priced a great many things. Below the floorboards a stagehand is coiling cable and counting under his breath. She has left the visitor's chair in the middle of the room, three feet short of the case, and the door open behind you.
"The Alder sale closed at ten. Everything on the inventory is sold, packed and gone to the warehouse."
She uncrosses her arms and lays one hand flat on the steel lid.
"Everything except this. It was consigned with a condition, and the condition has your name on it."
Her thumb taps the case once.
"The trucks come back at seven."