“What?”
“How are you actually?”
The question lands with none of her usual decoration. No joke. No flourish. No theatrical softness. She asks it plainly, which is the worst thing she can do because plainness has fewer places to hide.
I look at the screen. Behind Sophie, I can see the familiar corner of her apartment: cream sofa, green velvet pillow, stacks of art books arranged in a way she insists is casual and absolutely is not. A framed black-and-white photograph hangs slightly crooked over her shoulder. I know that apartment. I know the cabinet where she keeps the wine she opens for other people and the better wine she opens when she is upset. I know the bathroom drawer where she keeps three shades of the same lipstick because she refuses to accept that two have been discontinued. I know the sound her front door makes when it sticks in winter. The familiarity of it catches somewhere under my ribs.
“Rome is extraordinary,” I say.
Sophie doesn’t blink.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know.”
She waits.
I look down at the open notebook beside my laptop. My handwriting fills the page in tight lines. Rome is not generous. It is discerning. The sentence looks back at me as if it knows exactly what I am doing.
“I’m functional,” I say.
Sophie’s brow tightens.
“That’s a terrible word.”
“It’s an accurate word.”
“Accurate doesn’t make it less terrible.”
“I’m working well,” I say.
“You always work well.”
“The food is good.”
“Food is not a substitute for answering me.”
“It’s closer than most things.”
Sophie exhales through her nose, then sits back in her chair.
“Did he text you?”
My hand stills on the desk. I don’t look at the phone screen because the answer is already in my body, in the small tightening of my shoulders, in the way my thumb presses against the side of the coffee cup.
“Yes,” I say.
“When?”
“My first night.”
“What did he say?”
I glance toward the phone, though the screen is dark.
“That he thinks he made the biggest mistake of his life,” I say.
“That he wants to talk.”
