Page 108 of The Dangerous Dance

"And you did three hours of floor work in my sitting room."

"There's no barre," I say, with the specific dignity of someone making a reasonable point.

He looks at me.

I look at him.

"You're not exhausting," he says. "You're—" He finds the word. "A lot."

"A lot," I say.

"In the best possible sense."

"That's a diplomatic revision."

"I'm a diplomatic man."

"You're genuinely not," I say. "You're one of the least diplomatic men I've encountered. You say things directly and then you look at people while they process it."

"I say true things directly," he says. "There's a distinction."

I look at him.

He looks at me.

Outside, Ciarán completes a rotation. The fig tree continues being bare. The coffee on the table has gone cold.

"The Marco meeting," I say. "When it happens. I want to be prepared."

"I'll brief you on what he needs to know and what he doesn't need to know and where the line is."

"I'll draw my own line," I say. "But tell me what you'd prefer and I'll take it into account."

He holds my gaze for a moment. "That's more compromise than I expected."

"You gave me the garden," I say. "And two instead of four."

"And the ballet studio."

"And the ballet studio," I agree. "I can work with that."

He nods. He picks up the cold coffee and looks at it and sets it down again. "There's food," he says. "Mackenzie brought things this morning when she came for the briefing."

"I know," I say. "I ate some of it."

"Did she notice."

"She noticed and approved," I say. "She told me I needed more than crackers."

He almost laughs. "She's right."

"She usually is," I say. "It's one of her more exhausting qualities."

He does laugh at this, brief and real, and the kitchen catches it and holds it for a moment and the day which has been the particular long kind arranges itself around it.

"Eat something," I say. "And then tell me about the Marco conversation. All of it."

"It's a lot," he says. "It took forty-five minutes."