“Yes.” I’m not sure why he’s asking me if it’s alright.
He pulls a slim device from his pocket. He taps the device and looks down at it. A moment later, a voice fills the air.
“Ronan, darling! To what do I owe the enormous pleasure?”
I gasp. A face has appeared on the device. His mouth is moving. His eyes are blinking.
Mr. O’Rourke glances up. Whatever he sees on my face makes him smile. Not a cold smile. A warm one. The first smile I have seen from him.
“Nicholas, hang on.” He lowers the phone. “Come here, sweetheart.”
I go to him. He holds out the device, and I see the man’s face again. I see now that there are other things around him—a shelf, a lamp, a painting on a wall.
“He lives in another unit in this building,” Mr. O’Rourke says. “The phone lets us see him while we talk to him. It’s called FaceTime.”
“Ronan.” The man leans forward. “Who is this quaint little creature standing behind you looking at me as though I might crawl out of this phone and gobble her up?”
“Nicholas, meet Prudence, my….uh…wife.”
The man gasps as though he is dying. “No! You sneaky Gaelic devil you. You’ve taken a wife?”
Mr. O’Rourke does not respond to Nicholas’s question. Instead, he speaks to me. “Prudence, this is Nicholas. He’s my stylist.” Ronan angles the device toward me. “He can see you and hear you, and you can see and hear him. It’s a video call. Technology, not magic.”
“Oh, it’s so lovely to meet you, Prudence.”
My heart thumps. He is speaking to me. I lean forward. He has dark skin, sharp cheekbones, and eyes colored with something that makes them dramatic and bright. He wears a shirt in a shade of pink as bright as a rose petal. I have never seen that color worn by a man—I have never seen it on anyone.
“Say hello,” Mr. O’Rourke says.
“Hello,” I whisper.
“Oh, hello, you precious darling creature. I am going to eat you alive,” Nicholas says. “In the best possible way.” He looks at me as though studying my face. “Gorgeous bone structure. Gorgeous. But what on God’s green earth are you wearing? Ronan, what do we have going on here?”
“It’s a complicated situation,” Ronan says. “I need you here asap. She’s going to need everything.”
“Everything?” Nicholas repeats. A beat. “Everythingeverything?”
“Everything.”
“I’m already on the way.” The image bounces and tilts as he moves. “Give me thirty minutes.”
The screen goes dark.
I stare at the device in Mr. O’Rourke’s hand.
One corner of his mouth lifts. “It’s a cellphone. Among other things, it can send pictures and sound through the air so we can talk face to face even when we’re far apart.”
Pictures and sound through the air. I repeat the idea to myself, turning it over.
He angles the device toward me and taps it. My own face appears—moving, alive, blinking when I blink. I jerk backward, then lean closer. My reflection on the screen tilts her head when I tilt mine. I lift my hand, and she lifts hers. A laugh bubbles up from somewhere deep in my chest.
“I’ll get you your own cellphone tomorrow,” he says.
I lift my head. “My own?”
“Your own.”
My very own cellphone device that captures pictures and sends them through the air. The idea is so enormous I can barely absorb it.
