Inez's teacher had acquired a whistle.
Nora listened to the new recording twice on Thursday night. The first time she laughed at the whistle. The second time she heard Inez leave the teacher to explain why a whistle was a strange thing for an indoor dance class. The explanation had sounded good on paper. Spoken, it kept the teacher out of the room until there was nowhere for him to go back to.
She wrote, I think you're leaving him too early, then read it before sending. It sounded as though she meant a boyfriend.
At eleven sixteen she wrote instead: Could I hear the whistle ending once without the explanation? I laughed before it. I have a two-minute piece of mine. Could we each hear one thing tomorrow? Twenty minutes each, I come to you. If you're free.
Inez answered at eleven twenty-four. Eight thirty. Hard stop at nine fifteen. Bring coffee for yourself; mine is an entire project.
Nora set an alarm and went to bed without checking whether Mae had watched the interview again.
In the morning she drove to a building above a pharmacy, circled the block for a legal space and arrived with six minutes left before the time she'd promised. She bought her coffee at the place next door. A man at the counter had ordered something complicated and was trying to make it seem less complicated by explaining the reason for each ingredient.
Nora stood behind him, wanting to put a line in his mouth. Then her phone lit up. Cal. She let it ring out. It was eight twenty-seven.
Inez opened the apartment door in socks. The yellow sneakers were waiting beside a folded coat, both pointed toward the exit. The apartment smelled of toasted bread and something stronger, coffee being made with more equipment than Nora used to cook a meal.
“Sorry,” Inez said, moving a bag from a chair. “I had it clear. Then it was morning.”
“This is clear.”
“It isn't, but we're going to use that corner.”
There was a little open space between the sofa and the table. Inez moved a plant to the windowsill, caught a trailing stem on the back of a chair and said a sharp private word to it. Nora took off her coat without offering to rearrange the room.
A woman came out of the hall wearing a bicycle helmet and carrying one shoe.
“It's by the kettle,” Inez said.
“I know where it is.”
“Then why are you coming this way?”
“To say hello to your person.”
She waved the shoe at Nora. “Hello.”
“Hello.”
The woman found the other shoe, leaned against the door to put it on and asked Inez to remember the landlord was coming. Inez said she'd cleared the space under the sink and the landlord could enjoy it. They kissed each other's cheeks in a quick practiced way which didn't tell Nora what relation they were and didn't ask her to know. Then the woman went out, carrying the bicycle rather than riding it through the hall.
Inez looked at the clock.
“You first?”
“No. Yours. That's why—” Nora stopped. “Yours.”
“Okay.”
Inez had put a page on the table but didn't take it into the open space. She stood with her feet slightly apart. Nora recognized how long it could take to stop being somebody in an apartment and start being somebody who had brought people to watch her.
“The class is called Moving With Confidence,” Inez began. “I thought I'd start with a normal amount and work up.”
She found the teacher's body, hands resting on a waist which didn't seem to belong to her. The teacher surveyed the room with the injured pride of a man watching people fail to appreciate floor space.
“He says we all carry tension somewhere. Cheryl says, ‘I know where mine is. I'm married to him.’ Everybody laughs. The teacher doesn't. We haven't been given permission to discover humor yet.”
Nora laughed. Inez went on without looking pleased about it.
The knee began its slow journey. The hand pointed to the vacant patch of floor. Cheryl was being invited to imagine a larger body, a larger life, an entirely different class. The teacher reached an invisible hand toward his chest and lifted the whistle.
He blew it silently. It was a fine little movement, barely more than a pinched lip and a decision. Inez turned her face away from it, then back, trying to determine whether she had really just heard a whistle inside a room with six adults.
“We all stop,” she said. “Which is ridiculous. Of course we stop. That's what we've paid for. A man who can make six grown women stop doing something they didn't want to begin.”
It got a laugh from Nora. Inez kept going into the explanation from the recording, the sort of whistle it was, the school memory, why the room was too small for a whistle. She stopped herself halfway through.
“Can you do it with the whistle?” Nora asked.
“I am doing it.”
“I mean without telling us about the whistle afterward.”
Inez leaned against the table. “I want the awful explanation.”
“It's longer than the thing.”
“I know. He made us listen to it.”
She went back to the open space. The whistle came up. This time, after the little silent blast, the teacher carefully wound its string round his fingers before explaining where he'd bought it. Inez gave him an earnest, repulsive tenderness toward the whistle. It was the kind used outdoors. He knew it was a lot for this room. He had selected it anyway.
Nora laughed at the hands, then stopped when he began explaining how to breathe through the noise.
“See?” she said.
“I want you to hate being there.”
“I do.”
Inez grinned. “I know. Let me try the way out.”
Cheryl wanted to leave before her parking time ran out. The teacher tried to keep her through a meaningful exercise in being present, and Cheryl began looking down at the bag she'd put beside the wall.
“Time,” Inez said in the teacher's voice, “is something we can choose to release.”
She looked toward the door as Cheryl. “Not on this street.”
Nora laughed. It was a clean ending. Inez took two quick steps, gathering her things, and became the teacher again.
“Wait,” he said.
She stayed there, smiling helpfully, a little stranded. One hand held the whistle. The other offered a new place for Cheryl to stand. She moved that hand when the imaginary woman went past, keeping the invitation open until it pointed at nobody.
Nora waited. Inez blew the silent whistle once more, a tiny, useless puff. Then she stopped.
“I liked it on the parking,” Nora said.
“I like him left there.”
“You're making them wait after they know it's finished.”
“Yes.”
Nora studied the space where the hand had been. She could hear how she would cut it, the satisfying clap after Cheryl got to go. Inez was still holding the whistle, unwilling to give him that quick escape.
“I'm going to try it,” she said. “If they go quiet, they go quiet. I don't want to be Cheryl at the end.”
“Okay.”
Inez nodded, then looked at the phone recording on the table. “I want to watch it.”
They watched the whole new ending. It lasted longer than Nora wanted. At the small puff she laughed despite herself. Inez caught the sound and grinned at the screen. She circled a word on her page and crossed out a different one.
“The string's too much,” she said. “I'm losing the hand.”
She made the offered place again. Nora could see it more clearly without the string. Inez wrote down the change herself.
They had used eighteen minutes. Inez noticed the clock and held up both hands.
“Your two.”
Nora took out the page. It was only half a page, with the first line from last night's recording written large enough that she could see it on the table. She showed Inez the clip from Low Ceiling first, beginning after the plates.
Inez sat forward. When the man called for Mae, her mouth moved a little, not quite a smile.
On screen Nora stepped into the empty place, caught herself, and tried to become a woman who knew why she'd done it. Nora stopped the playback before the end.
“I keep doing that.”
“I saw.”
“I'm trying this instead.”
She stood in the corner. Inez moved the cup out of reach of Nora's elbow and sat back.
“I've brought everything,” Nora said. “The email, the bag, the thing from the bag. I've brought the face I use when I know you're only doing your job. I practiced it in the car.”
Inez smiled. Nora felt the smile and hurried.
“The problem is nobody says thank you. The problem is—”
“You're doing it.”
Nora stopped. “What?”
“Telling me the problem.”
“Right.”
Inez raised a hand. “Sorry. Do you want me to stop you?”
“Yes. No. Once. That's fine. Can I do it once all the way?”
“Yeah.”
Nora began again. She had a return email which needed to be printed, a bag which had lost its handles, a receipt which asked for a reason she couldn't fit inside the little box. She carried the thing she was returning as though she was still responsible for its feelings. The complaint was small. She wanted the person at the counter to understand why it had taken up the rest of her day.
“You can ask for the manager,” Inez said, as the person beyond the counter.
Nora turned toward the empty space. Then she stopped.
“Not her.”
“I didn't say her.”
“I know.”
Nora looked back at Inez. The answer had come too quickly, and she hadn't written it. She could feel how it belonged to the woman still holding the bag. She didn't want to tell her problem to another person. She wanted this person to agree it was a problem.
“I've already explained it to you,” she said.
“I can't do anything.”
“You can look more upset.”
Inez laughed, a brief surprised sound she couldn't disguise by trying to remain the shop assistant. Nora stayed where she was.
“Not that upset. Now I have to say something kind about you. I haven't got time. I've got this.” She shifted the imaginary bag. “Could you be upset at a level I can leave?”
Inez put a hand over her mouth. Nora could feel the next line offering itself and didn't take it. She let the woman with the bag wait for a face she would consider adequate.
When she stopped, Inez looked at the clock and then back at her.
“That's different.”
“Is it funny?”
“I laughed.”
Nora looked down at her hands. The bag had been there long enough to leave a shape in them.
“Can I see?”
“It's yours.”
They watched the little recording together. Nora had her back partly turned at the beginning, the camera catching the sharp movement she made when she thought the absent person might be offered. On screen she didn't look particularly noble. She looked like a woman who had decided somebody needed to experience a difficult afternoon in full.
“I should stop before the next line,” she said.
“I don't know the next line.”
Nora read it. It was the good one from the night before, carefully improved until it resembled several things she'd said in other rooms.
Inez considered it.
“I like when you wait for me to get more upset.”
“Yes.”
“But I can't tell you what Saturday will do.”
“I didn't ask you to.”
“You look like you want me to.”
Nora laughed a little and closed the notebook. It was nine oh-five. They had ten minutes left, which felt abruptly like a great deal of time and then like almost none.
Inez went to rinse her cup. Nora watched the butterfly clip bob above the sink as she bent to move something for the landlord. She thought of how earnestly Inez had said You actually wrote that. The terrible-week line. As though a handwriting sample were a window onto a person's entire inner life.
“The hotel wasn't like that,” Nora said.
Inez looked over her shoulder.
“The story in the clip. She wasn't talking about her fans. She'd had a bad show.”
“You said that.”
“I said she wanted me to tell her they were stupid. That's what she said. It was after, in her room. She couldn't get the dress undone.”
Inez turned off the tap.
“We were tired,” Nora said. “Both of us. She wanted me to stay. I stayed.”
The apartment had a sound from the street, a reversing van warning somebody it needed room. It went on much longer than Nora expected.
“She took care of me, too,” Nora said. “That night. My shoe had rubbed my heel raw. She put a bandage on it. We ate fries.”
Inez stood by the sink. She no longer looked like somebody listening for the end of a piece.
“I thought she was telling you what she thought of people,” she said.
“She was asking her friend to make her feel better.”
“And you put it with the line.”
“Yes.”
Inez looked at the table where the phone was still resting in its little stand. Nora reached over and stopped the recording.
“I didn't know that,” Inez said.
“I know.”
“I thought I was helping you show them something.”
Nora opened her mouth. She had shown them something. It was a defense which arrived ready to use. She could hear herself explaining the true part, and she didn't want to make Inez listen to a longer version of the clip.
“You weren't there,” she said.
“No.”
“I was.”
Inez dried her hands. She took more time than she needed over the space between her fingers.
“Are you going to say that?”
Nora looked down at her notebook. Under the half page she had just performed was the booking confirmation she'd printed because she liked seeing the date on paper. Next Friday. Her own name. She had removed Mae's photograph from the advertisement and not the product from the offer.
“I don't know how.”
“Okay.”
The word didn't sound like permission. Inez put the towel down.
“I need to get ready.”
“Of course.”
Nora gathered her things. She wanted to ask what would happen to the clip, but Inez had just learned something and didn't owe her an immediate useful decision about it. Nora put on her coat.
At the door Inez asked her to send the recording of the new run. Nora did it while they were both standing there so it wouldn't become something she meant to do later. Inez sent her own file back, the version with the teacher's small unheard whistle after Cheryl had left.
“Thank you for coming here,” she said.
“Thank you for the time.”
They didn't hug. Nora wasn't sure either had expected to. The door closed, and she went down the stairs past a box someone had marked Free, except lamp. The lamp was the only thing left in it.
In the car she played Inez's new ending once more. Cheryl got out. The teacher stayed, one hand still offering a place no one had taken. Nora waited through the part she'd wanted cut, and laughed at the little puff of breath.
Cal had left two messages. The first was about the advertisement. The second asked her to come early for dress, because they needed an answer before everybody arrived expecting to rehearse the same show.
She put the phone on its mount, waited for the street to clear and drove to the theater.