"What about it?"
"It's downwind of the cheese vendor."
Wren stared at the page. She had not considered wind direction. This was an oversight so obvious in retrospect that she felt it somewhere behind her sternum.
"Children's corner," she said, turning to the next page. "I had it here, at the back left. Away from the stage noise."
Freddie leaned forward. Looked at the placement. Looked at the overall map. "Hmmm," he said.
But there was a hesitation this time. He took a breath. Bit his lower lip.
It was a full lower lip, Wren noticed. And then blinked as though she could wipe the noticing from her eyes.
"Tell me," she demanded.
He looked up. For the first time that night, for the first time in their acquaintance, their gazes met. And held.
Freddie's jaw tightened slightly. It was a strong jaw, angles showing despite being covered by a well-trimmed beard. His throat moved as he swallowed. She watched that. She hadn't meant to watch that.
Her mouth had gone a little dry. She ran her tongue along her lower lip without thinking. His eyes dropped to her mouth. Just briefly. Then back up.
"What were you going to say?" she asked.
"I was…" he swallowed and began again. "If you moved the children's space one row forward, you'd get the afternoon light on it. Between two and four. The whole thing would look like… " He paused, seemed to consider whether to finish the sentence.
"Like what?" Wren said.
"Like a picture," he said simply.
She looked at where he was pointing. He was right. He hadn't chosen the right word, but she understood what he meant. If she moved the children's corner forward, the whole scene would be picturesque. Like something out of Wonderland. The kids would love it.
This was, she was keeping a private tally, the fourth time in an hour she had moved something because Freddie Gallagher had looked at a page for ten seconds and seen what she had missed. What she had expected from tonight — from the grumpy man outside her window, the one who received her eleven o'clock order with the energy of someone for whom human interaction was a tax — was friction. Obstruction.
What she was getting was a man who made a note when she gave him information instead of dismissing it. Who disagreed with her in four specific places, and was right in all four, and offered the correction without architecture. No preamble, no softening, no performance of being reasonable. Just the correct thing, plainly said, and then he moved on.
It was, she thought, with some reluctance, an extremely efficient way to work with someone.
