The dressmaker had marked Celeste's waist a quarter of an inch too tightly, and was pretending she hadn't.
“It stood beautifully last time,” she said.
“So did I,” Celeste said. “Now I'd like to sit down.”
Vivian stood behind the dressmaker, holding a little dish of pins. She could see both women in the mirror. The dress, a recreation of the cream one in the anniversary photograph, had a low square neckline and a narrow skirt. The original had been less flattering. Vivian had insisted they keep the slight severity; Celeste would look like a woman revisiting her own clothes, not being dressed as a more agreeable stranger.
“Here,” Vivian said. “A little room here.”
The dressmaker moved the pin. Celeste exhaled.
“I can have lunch. What a relief.”
“There are standing photographs too,” the woman said.
“Apparently I'll have to stand for quite a lot.”
Vivian met her eyes in the mirror. There was a private joke available, but she did not take it. Downstairs, people were moving furniture for the rehearsal dinner. The day had become busy enough for the apartment to begin feeling like something they'd imagined on a drive.
Celeste tried two pairs of shoes. The first made her too tall for the pose; the second pinched. She walked to the door and back while the dressmaker watched the hem, then stopped beside Vivian.
“Would you sleep with me in these?” she asked.
The woman looked up, startled.
Vivian looked at the shoes. “Not if you meant to keep them on.”
Celeste laughed. It gave the dressmaker permission to laugh too. She bent to the hem again, smiling to herself, while Vivian felt heat rise beneath her shirt. She had been made part of the performance and rewarded for participating. The joke would remain with her after the audience forgot it.
When the fitting ended, Celeste stepped behind the screen. Vivian collected the shoes and handed the dish back. The dressmaker packed slowly, unwilling to make the woman emerge before she was ready. A new message arrived on Celeste's phone, which lay faceup on the table. Vivian saw the first line: Revised points for discussion. Celeste reached around the screen, took the phone, and said she'd be a minute.
Vivian helped the dressmaker carry her bag to the landing. The woman asked quietly if she'd made the waist too loose now.
“She'll look beautiful,” Vivian said. “And she'll be able to breathe.”
“Sometimes they don't care about that.”
“She does.”
Back inside, Celeste was dressed in her own shirt and trousers. She stood at the desk, looking down at the phone. The recreation dress lay over the screen like an absent person.
“It's come,” she said.
Vivian went to her. “The draft?”
“Points for your lawyer. Not something to sign this afternoon.”
“Let me see.”
Celeste forwarded the attachment. Vivian sat by the window to read it on her own phone. It was short enough to make the terms seem practical. Purchase of the dependent portion of her advisory business, identified client relationships to be negotiated, five million at completion. Separate provision concerning Frances Carrow, to be established. Funding for Vivian's independently instructed civil counsel concerning the loan, subject to terms. Confidentiality. Cooperation. A proposed statement.
She read the proposed statement twice.
My office arranged and authorized the private disposal of the work entrusted through it.
The word authorized changed the whole sentence. She had expected an account of what she'd actually failed to do, the reassurances she'd given after she knew the original was gone. This made her the person who'd sent it away.
“No,” she said.
Celeste turned from the desk. “Which part?”
Vivian read it aloud.
“That's what needs discussing,” Celeste said.
“It isn't a discussion. I didn't authorize the disposal.”
“Your office handled the loan.”
“The loan. Seven years ago. Not the sale.”
Celeste crossed to her and looked at the screen, although she'd just read it herself. Vivian watched the movement of her eyes. She wanted to see surprise. What she saw was concentration.
“We can change the words.”
“We have to change what they say.”
“Then tell me.”
Vivian got up. Sitting down while Celeste leaned over her had begun to feel like accepting the sentence's account of who they were.
“I can say I failed to follow up. I can say I reassured Frances after Nicholas told me he'd handle it. I can't say my office arranged the sale.”
“All right.”
“And the part for Frances isn't a provision. It says there's going to be one.”
“It's preliminary.”
“The sentence about me isn't preliminary.”
Celeste took the phone from her, then stopped, handed it back. “You're right. Keep it.”
Vivian looked down at the screen. The gesture had been automatic, taking the thing that had become awkward. She couldn't decide whether Celeste had corrected herself out of care or because she'd noticed Vivian watching.
“Who wrote this?”
“Somebody who thinks it's possible to describe a bad situation without adding more bad situations.”
“Nicholas?”
“No.”
“Has he seen it?”
“Parts of it.”
“Which parts?”
Celeste walked to the window. For a while she said nothing. Below them a server was testing the height of two candleholders, lifting one, stepping back. Vivian recognized the desire to keep adjusting something small until the larger thing became bearable.
“Do you want me to leave?” Celeste asked.
“Don't do that.”
“I want to know.”
“You know.”
“I know you want a version where nobody has to put their name to anything unpleasant.”
Vivian felt herself flush. “I'm already in the unpleasant version.”
“Then help me get us out of it.”
“Not by saying I did something he did.”
There was a sound at the door. Nicholas, carrying a small plate with a piece of cake, looked from one to the other.
“Am I interrupting?”
“Yes,” Celeste said.
He nodded, without leaving. “I brought this to settle an argument. Kitchen thinks the cream is too much.”
“The cream is fine,” Celeste said.
“You haven't tried it.”
“I chose it.”
Nicholas held out the plate to Vivian instead. She did not take it. His eyes moved to her phone, then her face.
“You look serious,” he said.
“We were discussing Frances.”
“I see.”
He put the plate on the desk. With no one eating it, the cake looked foolish and vulnerable.
“What did you want her to say?” Vivian asked.
“About what?”
“The original. Her loan. Your sale.”
Nicholas glanced at his wife. Celeste looked back, quite steadily. Vivian had the feeling of arriving halfway through a conversation she had thought she was beginning.
“Let's not make separate problems out of something we're trying to settle together,” he said.
The phrase was so close to the heading above the proposed account—one integrated resolution, no separate elements—that she looked down at the phone again. It could mean nothing. Lawyers used phrases; married people borrowed them. She had no need to turn every shared word into a conspiracy.
“They're already separate,” she said. “Frances's money. My business. What actually happened.”
“Nobody's asking you to agree this minute.”
“Good.”
Nicholas looked as if he might put a hand on her shoulder. Instead he picked up the plate, cut off a piece of cake with the fork, and ate it himself.
“Too much cream,” he said.
Celeste gave a brief laugh. He smiled at her. It was a tiny restoration between them, habitual, no more important to either than putting a glass back on a coaster. Vivian watched, waiting for someone to notice she was still there.
Nicholas put down the fork. “I'll leave you to it.”
After he'd gone, Celeste sat on the bench beneath the window. She looked tired. Her face without its familiar animation seemed almost stern, the face of a woman Vivian might have passed in another city without imagining she could want anything from her.
“That was clumsy,” Celeste said.
“Which part?”
“You see how difficult it is when somebody makes you list them.”
Vivian sat beside her, leaving a little space. She didn't want to make peace too easily. She also didn't want to spend the only quiet half-hour they had proving she could withhold herself.
“I'm going to send this to someone of my own choosing,” she said.
“Yes.”
Vivian let herself breathe. From downstairs came a new swell of voices, guests arriving early enough to require feeding before dinner. There was no time to finish anything properly in this house. Even a quarrel had to leave room for the next arrival.
Celeste picked up the shoes from beside the bench. She put one on, stood, took a step. The shoe creaked.
“I hate these.”
“Then don't wear them.”
“They're the right ones.”
“You'll be sitting for the portrait. Wear the soft pair for the rest.”
Celeste looked at her. Vivian realized she'd repeated the dressmaker's objection from the opposite direction. She laughed, tiredly, and Celeste laughed too. The sound was a relief, then something Vivian resented being relieved by.
“Find me a pair I can walk in,” Celeste said.
Vivian looked toward the open wardrobe. She could do it at once, make the next ten minutes easier, return them to the language in which neither had to name what the other wanted.
Instead she picked up her bag.
“I have to go and see Lena.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Celeste took off the shoe. “Then I suppose I'll look myself.”
Vivian left before she could offer to stay. In the passage she stopped to forward the draft to the independent lawyer she'd used when buying her office. In the message she wrote: I have not agreed to this. Below it she quoted the sentence she would not sign, giving it no room to become something she'd only misunderstood.