The men who came for the painting wanted to know whether they should remove the wall hook.
“Leave it,” Celeste said.
She stood in the drawing-room doorway, dressed for the day in pale trousers and an old cotton shirt. The suitcase was beside her. Vivian had arrived in time to see the men take The Red Room off the wall. Under different circumstances she would have insisted on watching the whole procedure. Today she wanted the thing covered before somebody stopped to admire it.
One of the handlers glanced at the empty place. “All right.”
He had no reason to ask why an anniversary weekend required a picture to be taken away. He protected the corners, worked with his partner, and brought the wrapped frame toward the door. The glass of a nearby cabinet reflected it passing. For an instant Vivian could see the absence on the wall and the shape of the thing that had filled it, both at once.
“It's going to your place?” Owen asked.
“The apartment.”
“Do you want the console moved while the room's clear?”
“No,” Celeste said. “Leave everything.”
Owen nodded. He looked down at the suitcase, then at Celeste, and did not ask. Vivian liked him for that until she wondered whether the discretion was one more service they all expected without paying for it properly.
Celeste took the suitcase herself. In the drive, Vivian offered to put it in her car.
“I'll come with you.”
“What about yours?”
“I don't need two cars to go to an apartment.”
They drove behind the art van, Celeste sitting with the little bag she'd kept out of the suitcase on her knees. Her phone lit up twice. She looked the second time and answered a message with one thumb. Vivian watched the road. Frances's hand was still present on her arm, the dry warm grip, the question she'd already asked.
“How was she?” Celeste said.
“She wants to ask Nicholas about her painting.”
“I thought she wanted to ask you.”
“She's tried that.”
Celeste put the phone in her bag.
“I've asked for a draft,” she said. “Something you can show your lawyer.”
“Have you asked for the part concerning Frances?”
“Yes.”
“Not a figure mentioned as if it were an option. A commitment.”
“Yes, Vivian.”
The tone made her stop. She was being handed the thing she'd asked for and finding a reason to press again. She could hear how she sounded, the adviser correcting a woman who'd finally begun to act. She had not meant to become that person for Celeste. She was less sure whom she'd meant to be.
At the apartment, the van couldn't fit into the small loading space. Vivian got out and spoke to the building manager. He knew her, disliked the inconvenience, then produced a key to open a gate she had never noticed. There was the useful feeling of a problem yielding to her presence. She accepted it gratefully.
The men carried the picture upstairs. Celeste followed with the suitcase; Vivian took the elevator with the building manager, who told her a pipe in the unit above had made a noise all last winter. He wanted her to understand that nobody was to blame. She promised to tell him if she heard it.
The apartment smelled faintly shut. Vivian opened the balcony doors. Outside, traffic moved toward the bridge, a low continuous sound unlike the sea. The rooms were small by Wren standards, large by the standards of anywhere either of them had actually lived young. The chair Vivian loved stood at an angle by the window, upholstered in an orange so clear it made the rest of the room look deliberately chosen.
Celeste put down the suitcase.
“Oh, I like it.”
“The apartment or the terrible chair?”
“The chair isn't terrible.”
“You don't have to say that.”
“You don't have to ask me to dislike things.”
Vivian went to help the handlers. She had chosen a place in the spare bedroom where the wrapped frame could stand safely, away from the window and the door. They set it down on padded blocks. One man asked for her signature on the receipt. She checked the description, origin and destination, signed to acknowledge custody, and took a copy. It recorded the journey of a frame and the picture inside it. It did not make the picture true.
After the men left, Celeste came to the doorway. For a moment they stood looking at the wrapped shape.
“Do you want to open it?” she asked.
“No.”
Celeste nodded, as if this were exactly the answer she'd needed.
In the kitchen, Vivian found cups and a jar of coffee whose lid was stuck. Celeste took it from her, banged the edge against the counter, opened it. Vivian winced.
“You bought the counter. Use it.”
“I'm going to write that on your marble table.”
Celeste laughed. She filled the kettle without asking where it was and put it on. They moved around each other in the narrow room, touching by accident twice. The first time Vivian apologized. The second time she didn't.
“You could put the table by the window,” Celeste said.
“It is by the window.”
“The other window.”
“You haven't been here ten minutes.”
“I can be quicker.”
They took their coffee into the living room. Celeste sat in the orange chair, tested the arms, pulled her legs beneath her. Vivian sat on the sofa. She had thought of the apartment as a useful property, a place clients might borrow or a visiting relative could stay. Now Celeste occupied the best chair as if she had been expected, and the whole investment seemed to have been waiting for this morning.
“Would you miss the house?” Vivian asked.
Celeste looked around. “Yes.”
Vivian was relieved by the answer and ashamed of the small disappointment beneath it.
“It's a good house,” she said.
“It's a wonderful house. I know what I'm leaving.”
“And Nicholas?”
Celeste turned the cup in her hands. “I haven't stopped liking him.”
Vivian waited. She had asked for an honest answer. It was unreasonable to resent having received one.
“If you could stop liking somebody every time they hurt you, we'd have more small parties,” Celeste said.
“You could stay.”
“Is that what you want?”
“No.”
The answer came before she could make it less revealing. Celeste looked at her for a long moment, then put down the cup.
“Come here.”
Vivian stayed on the sofa. It was not a refusal exactly. She wanted to see whether Celeste would get up.
Celeste did. She crossed the room and sat beside her.
“Did you agree with Nicholas about—” Vivian began.
Celeste reached for her hand. Vivian turned her palm up to meet it and let the question go unfinished. The bracelet slid into the space between their palms.
“You don't have to decide everything,” Celeste said.
“I've been trying not to decide anything. It's becoming expensive.”
“There's money for that.”
Vivian withdrew her hand. Celeste saw the mistake as soon as she'd made it.
“I didn't mean—”
“I know.”
“Let me say it.”
Vivian looked at her.
“I didn't mean you. I meant the work. I want there to be a difference.”
“There is.”
“Then don't look at me as if I've put a price on sitting here.”
Celeste's anger was sudden and personal. Vivian preferred it to the easy tenderness, which made her feel she was always the one doing more of the wanting. She reached for the hand she'd let go.
“I haven't had enough sleep.”
“Neither have I.”
There was a silence in which Vivian thought Celeste might ask where she'd spent the morning. She would have had to answer with something other than the truth, and she was tired of hearing herself manage things. Instead Celeste leaned back and let their shoulders touch.
“I could read here,” she said.
“There's a bookcase.”
“I mean without a dinner starting in another room.”
“You'd miss it.”
“Probably. I can miss something and still go.”
Vivian looked at the balcony. In the apartment opposite, a man in a faded shirt was watering a plant. He poured, waited, poured again. Nothing in his afternoon required them to become anything more than two women sitting on a sofa. Vivian wanted the possibility so badly she found herself avoiding its practical details. How many nights? What clothes? When would Nicholas know? Those questions could wait until this was real enough to survive them.
Celeste got up and went to the suitcase. She rolled it into the main bedroom, came back with the little velvet case and set it on the table.
“Somewhere safe?”
Vivian showed her the small locking cupboard in the bedroom. Celeste put the case inside. The wardrobe held spare hangers; she used three of them, smoothing a blouse, shaking out a pair of trousers. Vivian watched from the doorway. She could imagine the clothes remaining, the suitcase pushed under the bed, the chair turned permanently toward the view Celeste preferred.
“Stay a little,” she said.
Celeste turned. “Now?”
“You don't have to go straight back.”
“The fitting's at three. They're already doing the room.”
“They can do the room.”
“I know. But they can't fit the dress to somebody else.”
It was true, and perfectly reasonable. Vivian nodded. They had made a place available; there was no reason Celeste had to occupy it this minute. The whole arrangement would be ruined by demanding proof of it in every ordinary decision.
In the kitchen they washed the two cups. Celeste dried them and put them in the wrong cupboard. Vivian left them there.
“You should keep a pair of shoes here,” Celeste said.
“I own the apartment.”
“Then you should have thought of it.”
She picked up her bag. The apartment keys were in it, hanging from the red tag. Vivian saw them when Celeste checked her phone, felt a disproportionate comfort at their continued existence. Celeste could return without her. There would be a future moment in which the woman let herself in and found something to drink.
They shut the balcony doors, turned off the lights, and left the picture in the spare room, wrapped and safely supported. In the elevator Celeste leaned her head briefly against Vivian's shoulder. No one was there to see it.
On the drive back, Vivian took the route without the road construction. Celeste rested a hand on her arm at the light. “You did make it easy,” she said.
Vivian looked ahead until the signal changed, then drove them both back to the house.