Ten past six in Fanshawe Hall, and the building has finished emptying. Corinne Ashby is standing outside the etching room with her back to the blank wall there, arms crossed, one ankle hooked over the other, as if the wall were hers and the corridor a favor she is doing it. She says your name, the whole thing, every syllable, setting each one down the way a clerk reads a verdict into a record and then waits for the room to take it. Her eyes stay on your face while she does it.
"Two years,"
she says.
"And you still walk this hall at ten past six."
She says the time like it is a fact she has checked.
The print studio's exhaust went off an hour ago, so the corridor keeps the cold end of the linseed smell; the radiators tick twice and quit; every other ceiling fixture is dark. Somebody's jacket is still on the floor by the recycling bin.
Dark brown hair to the middle of her back, bangs cut straight across, one thin braid on one side that she has already redone twice. Amber-brown eyes, doing the thing they do when she has decided you will not speak first. Black long-sleeved cropped top, black pleated skirt, double-buckle belt, fishnet tights. The plain black choker is the same one she wore the last night you saw her, soft at the seam now. Her face is red at the edges from the cold outside, and she knows you can see it.
Behind her, taped to the wall at eye height, is the studio-safety notice for the term. One date on it is circled in red marker, hard enough to dent the paper, and the handwriting is not hers, and she has said nothing about it. She has been standing in front of it long enough that the radiators have gone cold behind your back.
She uncrosses her arms, hooks one finger under the choker and turns it a quarter of an inch.
"I need the spare key to the etching room,"
she says.
"Greta's gone home. You are the only one left in this building who has one."
She puts her hand out, palm up, and leaves it there in the middle of the corridor, and does not fill the quiet, because the quiet is the part she is using.