Dev shakes his hand like a man who is not intimidated by anything and introduces himself. The two of them end up standing near the kitchen window discussing the catastrophic state of pension fund liquidity. Within six minutes Narod explains a specific actuarial model he's been developing.
James arrives and finds the cheese board and stations himself next to it with the dedication of a man who has located his purpose for the evening.
Greta arrives last, blowing through my door with her coat half-on and a very expensive bottle of red tucked under her arm, takes one look at Narod across the room, turns to face me with theatrical outrage, and hisses, directly into my ear, "Livia Chordas, you have been holding out on me."
"I have not."
"You said he was tall."
"He is tall."
"Tall," she repeats, with significant emphasis, "implies basketball player. It does not imply." She gestures broadly in Narod's direction.
"Greta."
"I'm just saying. For future reference. There needs to be a different word."
Narod, across the room, looks up at his name not being said, which I've noticed he does, this ambient awareness of me in any space we're sharing, and catches my eye, and I give him a very small reassuring nod that means everything is completely fine, and the corner of his mouth does the thing where it wants to smile but he doesn't quite let it, which is my absolute favourite thing in his entire considerable repertoire.
Dinner goes wellfor the first hour and a half.
I made the lamb, slow-cooked with herbs, and a ridiculous amount of sides, partly because I enjoy cooking and partly because I'd calculated, correctly, that having enough food on the table gives everyone something to do with their hands and their mouths during potential awkward silences. Narod navigates the small dining chair with careful precision and uses the salad fork correctly, which he mentioned later he had researched, and he listens with genuine attention when Maya describes her work, and he makes a dry, precisely timed comment about pension fund risk assessment that makes Dev actually choke on his wine from laughing, and by the main course I'm starting to think I was worried about nothing.
Priya has been on her third glass of Pinot for a while.
I register this, the way you register weather changing, a low ambient pressure shift, because I know Priya. I have known Priya for fifteen years. Priya is sharp and funny and loyal and she gets loud and loose-tongued past the second glass and then the edit function starts lagging, and I have seen this cause several mildly combustible situations at various social gatherings over the years.
I've been watching her watching Narod across the table. Not unkindly, exactly. More with the squinting, slightly sideways attention of someone trying to locate a category for something unexpected.
I should redirect the conversation. I know I should redirect it. I'm reaching for a new topic, already constructing the pivot, when Priya leans forward on her elbows and points her fork, not aggressively, just gesturally, in Narod's direction, and says, with the cheerful ease of someone who does not currently have access to their own better judgement,
"I have to ask. The whole." She waggles the fork vaguely. "Tusks, the big sort of. I mean, is it like a heritage thing? Like cultural? My gran had this thing about never cutting her hair for religious reasons. Is it like that? Like, very barbaric-ancestry-type thing? It's fascinating, genuinely, I've just never."
She keeps talking. I stop hearing the individual words because the table has gone absolutely, completely, immediately silent, the specific silence of six people simultaneously realising something has gone badly wrong, and I'm watching Maya freeze with her wine glass halfway to her mouth, and Dev look at the tablecloth with the attention of a man removing himself from a situation, and James stop engaging with the cheese board for the first time all evening, and Greta's hand land on my arm under the table, firm and steadying.
And I'm watching Narod.
His fork has set itself down onto his plate with the extremely quiet precision of a very controlled person making a very controlled decision. His eyes have moved from Priya's face to the middle distance above her left shoulder. Every line of his enormous frame, the frame he spends his entire life trying to compress and minimise and make less, has gone very, very still.
The lamb sits in the suddenly cold air of my dining room, going tepid.
CHAPTER 12
NAROD
The wordbarbaricsits in the air above Priya's wine glass like a thing with weight and edges, and I conduct a very rapid internal assessment.
The statistical probability that she meant genuine harm is low. I have enough experience with humans, with their loosened social inhibitions and their pattern of categorising the unfamiliar, to recognise the tone. Curiosity without cruelty. The kind of thoughtless comment that arrives through a gap in one's filters rather than through any particular malice. My actuarial brain builds the model in approximately four seconds flat, assigns probabilities, weighs variables. Priya, thirty-one, a physiotherapist, on her third glass of something that smells like dark cherry and tannins, operating at roughly sixty-five percent of her usual social awareness. Probability of deliberate offence, seventeen percent. Probability of genuine cultural ignorance, seventy-eight percent.
The model doesn't help the way I wish it would.
I pick my fork back up. This is a conscious decision, picking it back up, because it had started to bend slightly under my grip and I do not want to damage Livia's silverware. I set it against the plate instead, properly, tines down, the way acivilised person does, the way I have practised, and I look at Priya's expectant face, still slightly flushed, still waiting for an answer, and I construct the most precise and neutral smile in my available repertoire.
"It is not a cultural practice," I say. My voice comes out exactly the register I intended. Measured. Polite. The voice I use in client-facing meetings when a portfolio has significantly underperformed and no one in the room wants to hear the numbers. "Orc tusks are simply physiological. Analogous to wisdom teeth in humans, structurally, though the developmental function is." I pause. "Somewhat different."
Priya nods, looking vaguely satisfied, vaguely like she might ask a follow-up question, and I have already decided that I am going to give her the complete biological overview if she does, very calmly, very thoroughly, until the conversation naturally redirects itself toward something that requires her to refill her wine glass.
Under the table, Livia's hand finds my knee.
