It was the class for stragglers.
Charles shucked his joggers so that he could pull yesterday’s sour tights over his underwear. He squeezed two cold drops of Visine into each eye and blinked hard as he considered the black athletic brace in his bag. But he left it because if he couldn’t get through a class, he had no business dancing at all.
He was against the back wall with two of the younger male dancers, Viktor and Ben. They were about sixteen and had been homeschooled from first grade. They wore wooden crosses under their Lycra shirts and talked about vacation Bible school. Once, Charles had come into the changing room after rehearsal and found them taking pictures of each other with their tights rolled down to the tops of their hips, flexing their chests and stomachs. They were startled to see him and quickly assumed a posture of boredom, their eyes cast down.
Now the two of them were doing mirrored stretches, pushing and pulling each other. They had turned it into a kind of strength contest and each struggled mightily to knock the other boy over. Their skin was taut but oily, the corners of their mouths boiling with angry acne. Their foreheads were spotted with a flora of sores and inflammation. But both of them had large eyes and emitted an intense freshness that made Charles feel ancient at twenty-four.
Charles got out the elastic, looped it over his toes, and flexed until the burn subsided. He switched feet. The boys were talking about the afternoon rehearsal for Farnland’s piece. Charles bristled. He was never going to be a beautiful dancer—this had never been a mystery to him. He was too tall, for one thing, and too slow for another. No matter how hard he tried, there was always something rough and unfinished about his dance—which was one thing if you were doing contemporary, but Charles had too much self-respect to consider himself a contemporary dancer. He had been classically trained, or whatever passed for classical in Maine, and he had certain ideas about what that meant.
They watched him as he changed shirts. They were hairless, those two, not even a faint blond fuzz, as smooth as marble. He felt their disgust. Their horror. They saw what their future might entail when they thickened and coarsened and their bodies turned them into men.
The instructor for the late class was Farnland, an ancient choreographer about whom there were rumors. But there were always rumors about what happened in private rehearsals and masterclasses. What people said and did in the steam room or in the evening sessions when they drilled and drilled because the instructor had been shot down at a bar the night before. Everyone talked about everyone else, passed around gossip about hands lingering, rising, falling, searching, coming to rest in inappropriate places for beats of time too long. All of it allusion and reference and innuendo. When asked to confirm, though, no one had anything to say, because, hey, letters of rec, hey, new works choreographed, credit given or credit withheld. A million ways to get even or pay off. Everyone wanted their pound of flesh one way or another.
Charles and the others set up the barres, locking down the wheels so they’d stay put. He found himself near the wall of windows that looked out over University Ave. The world was all brightness and snowmelt. His eyes stung a little. His head throbbed. He was stiff and sore from having slept in Lionel’s bed. He could smell himself, sweat, garlic, and sex.
Farnland clapped them to attention and gave the accompanist a flick of his fingers. Late class was in the small studio, with the terrible acoustics and the electric keyboard. When the music began among the echo of Farnland’s harsh claps, there was a tinny reverb to it.
They began their warm-up.
“Long, yes, longer, longer,” Farnland called. “Think long, beautiful, easy, easy, that’s it.”
Charles stretched until he could feel something solid shift upward in his back. It felt good, that hollow click in his spine. Then up, and back, his foot sliding forward, careful with his arm, not dead weight—floppy noodle, as his earliest teacher had called it. His waist burned where the tights cut into his skin and against his hip bones. That felt good, too. His body hummed to life.
“Pliés,” Farnland said. “And I want them deep.”
Charles thought he’d barf, but he held his guts inside as they all sank into plié.
“Lot of shallow graves today.”
Charles looked out over the rows of barres: dancers in leg warmers and joggers, jackets and quarter-zips. He felt at once relief and also distress at not seeing Sophie. If she could have seen the state of him, looking hungover and tired, it would have obviated a need for a discussion about what he had done with Lionel.
As it was, now he would have to talk. Use words. Say things. They were honest and open about the people they slept with. But whereas Sophie found this easy, and at times pleasurable, Charles found it difficult. He didn’t like talking about the time he’d gotten his dick sucked at a party they’d both attended, or the time he’d done speed at the club they visited in Chicago, or the time he let one of the girls from the drama department think he was her boyfriend in order to score a meeting with her cousin, an agent who was coming through town.
Charles always felt dirty, implicated. The act of telling her held a mirror up to what he’d done, which was ordinary and base and simple and just the kind of thing that people did with one another or to one another, but somehow, in the duplicating that retelling required, it became something else. When he could see himself, really see himself, he didn’t like what he saw.
“Charles, are you with us or not?” Farnland’s voice carried through Charles’s thoughts, and he found himself in the wrong position, completely out of the music’s course.
“Sorry,” he said, but Farnland gave him a long, exasperated look. Among the many lines and heavy folds, there were two bright blue eyes, as cold as the sea. Farnland gripped Charles’s elbow and one of his hips, putting him into position as if he were a small boy. Charles absorbed the dry hardness of the touch and let the humiliation settle into the pit of his stomach.
“Are the rigors of second position too much for you?” Farnland asked. “Do you need a moment to prepare?” Charles was close enough to see the hateful moisture at the corners of the man’s eyes. There was a flicker of true sincerity in his voice, as if he truly believed that Charles found second position difficult.
“Sorry,” Charles said.
“Don’t be. It’s fine. We all make mistakes,” he said with as much patience as scorn. “We’ll take it from the top, if that’s okay with you.”
“That would be wonderful,” Charles said through a tense jaw.
“From the beginning, then, Magnus,” Farnland said, nodding to the slim pianist.
The music started up again, and Charles sighed. He assumed a slouched, grumpy first. He could hear his knee click. The cartilage felt hot, like a delicate, burning fiber trapped under the bone. But when Farnland’s eyes came in search of him, his body had already slipped into the stream of the combination and was, for a moment, beyond reproach.
“Dismal, dismal,” he said.
Charles shared his barre with Mats and Alek. Mats was light-skinned with blond and brown curls. He had a boyish face, but his body was all mean, tight lines. He could jump to Jupiter, yet his quads were humble. Alek was self-conscious about his chipped front tooth and tried to conceal it by talking as little as possible, which made him seem shy or nice. Alek was a ferocious, expressive dancer with the kind of timing that made his dancing look totally effortless.
“Long night,” Mats said.
“The longest,” Charles droned, drawing his body up. His knee popped as he slid his foot forward and then flexed. It didn’t hurt, exactly. It wasn’t pain in the true sense of the word. It just burned, like a low, simmering flame. And just on the one side. He could see through to the end of the pain, its temporary nature. And this was a comfort. It hurt only on certain movements. Certain configurations of tension. For example, reversing the position, sliding the leg back and flexing the other way, was totally without discomfort. He logged this information, storing it for when he would need to compensate. His body was a long tally of adjustments and allocations. He could feel, though, his feet coming to life. The muscles warming as they stretched.
Charles had once seen an X-ray of his foot. He had let the back of an ax drop down carelessly, and his grandfather had needed to drive him to the emergency room. The doctor said that it wasn’t broken, just bruised very badly. She showed Charles the film of his foot and said that he was lucky. Because the foot was one of the most complicated structures in the human body. They’re never quite the same. All those little bones, you see. They don’t ever heal right. And he’d marveled at the ridiculous architecture of the foot, his foot. He had seen all the little bones, the way they fit together. He was already dancing by then, but it hadn’t occurred to him until that very moment, the doctor outlining the shape of his foot with her finger, that if he hurt himself, he’d never dance again. Until that moment, he’d been content to do as he always had. Working on the tree farm to pay for his lessons and studio time. Doing handstands to make the men laugh. Suspending himself from the monkey bars at school. Running barefoot in the locker room over slick floors. The world had not seemed dangerous to him until that moment. That was the blessing of certain childhoods. The illusion of your invincibility. Your safety. Some people didn’t know the danger they were in until years later, looking back. That was a kind of blessing, too, in a way. The ignorance of your own peril.
“You smell like hell,” Alek said. “You smell like—”
“Something awful,” Mats completed. Their voices were complementary: Mats very low, Alek higher, a dull tenor.
“Generous,” Charles said. Mats yelped briefly. Farnland turned to them.
“Is there something so funny about our fundamentals?” He let his arms hang down, his head tilted to the side. His mouth was furious.
“No,” Charles said, squaring up his shoulders and facing ahead. “Nothing funny at all.”
“No,” the other two said.
“Oh, good. I’d hate to miss out.”
Charles was not as afraid of him as he had been of other ballet teachers. There was something truly terrible about that species of human. They were farsighted by nature, seeing not what you did, only what you might do or, more often, what you might do wrong. The moment you completed a gesture, they were already looking ahead to the moment you made a mistake, and it was that fear and frustration that drove them to punish you. Again and again you drilled, again and again you dipped and turned and spotted and turned out and rotated and lifted, and higher, please, higher!, until their voices were as much a part of you as your own interior static. Charles saw Farnland for what he was, though: a preening, declining old man with a mean streak. They gazed at each other then, caught in a bitter contest of wills.
At a party the previous year, Charles had seen Farnland whispering in Viktor’s ear, his hand at the small of Viktor’s back, pulling at the oversize burgundy silk shirt he wore. Viktor with a plastic cup of champagne, giggling, his hand on Farnland’s chest. Charles had seen it, and the Farnland had seen him see it. But what was there to do about it?
“Nothing to miss,” Charles said.
“He hates you,” Mats said with glee. “He hates you so much.”
“You run over his cat or what?” Alek asked pointedly. “Keep me out of the splash zone.”
“Maybe he wants to fuck,” Mats said.
“Oh, most definitely,” Alek said.
“And to skin Charlie alive. Maybe it’s a Buffalo Bill thing. He wants to wear you.”
“I’m not his type,” Charles said, but then, his eyes falling on Viktor at the front of the room, he felt a bit of regret.
“You did show up late.”
“Smelling like last night’s garbage.”
“It wasn’t garbage, trust me,” Charles said, turning to look over his shoulder at Alek.
“Oh, Sophie is going to love that.”
“Say more. Don’t leave us hanging.” Mats moaned.
“Don’t tell me about Sophie,” Charles said to Alek. “You don’t know anything.”
They lapsed into silence. Charles could feel Alek’s pointed stare, the heat stabbing him between the shoulders. There was a time during the summer when Alek had made a go at Sophie, all earnest kisses and declarations. They had gone to a movie and then a concert in the park, standing close together, she wearing one of Charles’s old flannels and Alek holding on to her hand as they swung around in a slow circle. Then they had drunk beer in the woods around a fire as the air was settling down and getting cooler, and Sophie had been on Alek’s lap. Charles came to the same gathering with a friend, and at first Alek blushed when they saw each other, but then he wrapped himself around Sophie.
You can’t hold on to her, he had wanted to say to Alek then. The world had blasted away every other part of her life: her parents were dead, her sister was dead, nothing remained to tether her to the world as they knew it. She had only herself and dance. Alek could never hold on to her. No one could. Charles felt proud of her talent. Not that it had anything to do with him. But he felt proud that he could recognize it and what it meant. Yeah, there would be shitty years of auditions and open calls. But nobody who watched Sophie dance could say she didn’t have real charisma. She danced in that way that made it seem natural. Improvised almost. But never sloppy. There was a through line, and you could follow it no matter how complex the combination. She had the same thing Misty Copeland had, which wasn’t pristine Russian technique, but substance. And he felt like he knew that about her. That his talent was for recognizing her talent and knowing he’d get out of her way when the time came.
Sophie had lifted herself from Alek’s lap and spun herself around, letting her arms rise above her head. She swayed to the music, animating the song, some formless acoustic indie number full of haunting melodies and high, piercing voices, by a band with a name like a ghost story. And then she left Alek and came toward him, skirting around their other friends, dancing, smiling, until she wrapped her arms around him.
“Hey,” she said, “I missed you.”
“Hey,” he said, “long time no see.”
“Long time,” she said, drawing out the first word, letting it turn indistinct and gravelly at the back of her throat. “What’re you doing here?”
Charles sighed and shrugged. The air had smelled of pine needles and burning wood, which made him think of home in rural Maine, and all those hours of light, and the water, so much of it everywhere, lakes and rivers and streams and creeks. So much water.
“Oh, you know.”
“I know,” she said, and there was a smile, a smile for him.
“Come over tonight?” he asked, letting himself pout a little. She looked up at him with a shocked expression, because they never made designs on each other this way, never intruded when the other was out, never asked unless there was a necessity. He knew that he was doing too much, changing the rules of the game, but he’d hated the satisfied look on Alek’s face, so sure of himself, so pleased. He half expected her to turn him down, but she sighed and rolled her eyes.
“I can if you want,” she said.
“I do,” he had said, realizing he meant it, because as he said it, something in him hurt, and for a dancer, pain is always the way you know something is true. “Yes, I want you to.”
“Okay,” she said, and she kissed his chest and went back to Alek. That poor fool, though. If he got hurt, it was only his fault because he should know the score, and besides, Sophie was an adult, free to come and go as she pleased. She made dates. She messed around. It was known.
Alek still resented him, even now. It was obvious in the way he had suggested that Charles had been out rolling in garbage instead of being at home with Sophie. But it was really, truly none of Alek’s business, so Charles put a little smugness in his turnout, let his hips roll and snap as he lifted into the air.
He wouldn’t be bullied.
At the end of the class, Charles was putting his arms into his flannel when Farnland approached him.
“Charles,” he said. “A word.”
“All right.” Charles was soaked with sweat. Pins and needles ran down the outside of his leg to his toes. The afternoon light was brilliant through the windows. Their shadows stretched across the floor.
“You were late. You smell like a distillery. And you dance like a bowlegged ox.”
“That’s more than a word,” Charles said. He did try to look apologetic.
“You are setting a terrible example. Think of the younger dancers,” he said, and Charles flinched. “You are a senior member of this program. Don’t make me regret fighting for you.”
Think of the younger dancers, Charles repeated in his mind. Think of those young boys in their silk shirts at parties, with no one to look out for them, being given plastic cups of champagne. Think of the giddy high of being with people who understood what you did and what you loved instead of being shoved into a locker by a bunch of lacrosse jerks who got drunk on their dads’ boats and drowned on lazy summer nights. Think of those poor young dancers, aching knees and throbbing feet. Their eyes stinging with sweat. Think of the young dancers. Charles clenched his jaw and squared his shoulders.
“I do think of them,” he said.
Farnland sucked his teeth, the most ungraceful gesture Charles had ever seen him make. He looked at his fingernails as if Charles were worth less than what prospective dirt might be found there. He deserved that, he thought. Fair enough.
“Your knee?”
“Can barely feel a thing,” Charles ground out. In truth, he should have listened to Sophie last night and gone home to ice it. He had no business running through the snow after Lionel, and now dancing on it.
“You’re listing,” Farnland said. “No way you’re making it through rehearsal tonight.”
Charles had been selected by Farnland to dance in some Balanchine rip-off. It was all cheap schmaltz and feeling. Neither classical nor contemporary. It existed in that middle ground of hazily choreographed vaporware. He would not have considered it had Farnland not mentioned to him that his former apprentice ran PNB and would be interested in seeing some of Charles’s tape if it included parts of this new work. It was a blatant quid pro quo, Charles knew. Don’t say anything about fondling the little boys and he could have a chance to dance for PNB, which was not a great company, it was true, though it was a little better than he could otherwise reasonably hope for. But the knee, which had started to burn at the start of fall, now throbbed regularly.
“Maybe you should take it easy. Lay off,” Farnland said with real human kindness in his voice. Charles watched Farnland’s hand rise just a little, like he meant to reach out for him. Charles shifted away at the thought of that touch, and Farnland’s hand fell back into place.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m more than fine. I’ll live.”
“We can get Viktor to dance for you. It’s no problem. He’d probably love it. No need for you to make it worse just for a rehearsal.”
Charles cleared his throat and stood a little taller. He summoned what heat he had left burning in him and bore down on the choreographer.
“It’s mine,” he said. “I’ll dance it.”
“You could have a long career, Charles. Teaching. Dancing isn’t the only thing.” The choreographer slapped Charles’s thigh with the back of his hand—“Think about it. Don’t be dumb. You know how many teachers end up gimps? And why?”
“I’m doing your faggy little dance. Ease off.”
Farnland wet his lips as though he had received something appetizing. Charles watched his eyes go glossy and distant. It was the same expression that came across Farnland’s face during rehearsals when he watched Viktor shadow Charles, learning the overly emotive choreography of the middle section. It was supposed to be drawn from The Four Temperaments but lacked that piece’s emotional reserve. On Viktor, Farnland’s choreography was hectic, scattered. On Charles, because he lacked Viktor’s speed, it had a certain gravitas. Or so Charles liked to think. But during rehearsal last week, he had looked up to see Farnland watching Viktor as he made some adjustments to the ending combination. That same distant, wantful gloss of the eyes, the subtle shifting of the lips as the music wound up to its slow conclusion.
“Well, just remember, we’re all after the same thing.”
“Right. Pathos.”
“Fucker,” Farnland said, but then he smiled, showing Charles his teeth, gnarly and green-yellow. Charles smiled back. Pathos was what Farnland had called his “dumb number.” It was, he said often during rehearsal, art’s most noble pursuit. One evening, one of the other dancers had jokingly said, What about ethos? And Farnland, from a seated position, had flung a hard-shell water bottle at her head. Then he’d shouted them all down for ten minutes about making snide little remarks and the terrors of their generation. What did any of them know about art? About anything? Charles half wished that Farnland would make a scene now. That he’d do something.
But he didn’t. Farnland waved him off and pushed out into the hall. The noise from the class next door, the music, filled the room briefly, and then was gone.
Charles flexed his fist and worked over his knee. Little old man, full of spite. But Charles had done nothing to stop him.
Charles cut through the courtyard, scattering a group of smoking students. They trailed white smoke, legible in the piercing daylight. His sweat had turned to a chalky crust, and he could feel it breaking up when he moved, cold sneaking in against his skin. The class had done its work. His muscles were warm, and he felt pliant, alive. He’d pulled the brace on to give his knee some relief. On the other side of the courtyard, he slipped into the dance library.
Sophie often haunted the upper levels of the library in the media room, looking over old choreography. She could have streamed it on her phone in high definition, but she liked browsing through the years of archival footage, poring over little-known, minor dancers, taking bits here and there from everyone like a magpie.
He found her sitting on the floor with an enormous album covering her entire lap. She was running her finger up and down the list, deciding which to take out. She leaned down over it, exposing the tender white nape of her neck. He kissed her there before she knew he was present, and she jumped, screaming.
“Shh,” he said as he crouched. His knee crackled like static.
“You are a menace,” she hissed, her eyes flashing.
“What are you looking at?” He sat down to take the weight off.
“Old shit.” She handed him the book, the pages yellowed, little black disks tucked inside plastic wrap, neat type glued next to each one. “God, you stink.”
“I had practice.”
“That’s not practice smell,” she said. “That’s not practice smell at all.”
He squeezed his legs together, thinking that might help, but she just snorted at him. “Where’s your phone?”
“I don’t know, dead probably,” he said, looking but not looking at the album.
“I called you,” she said. “After you left last night.”
“Oh, well, it died, so.”
Charles felt her staring at him very intently. There was no anger in the gaze. She knew the truth already, where he’d gone and what he’d done—there had been no mystery to it—but what she wanted was confirmation of the act. Say it: I went home with Lionel.
“What?”
Sophie leaned back onto her hands. She arched her back and let her head hang. “You’re such a shitty liar,” she said. “Why must you lie?”
“I’m not.”
“How boring, Charlie.”
“I’m sorry for boring you.”
“How was it?”
“How was what?”
“Jesus, Charlie.” Sophie stood up and stretched, at first one way and then another, making her body as long as she possibly could. She was full of lines. Everywhere she turned, a line, a new way forward. The tips of her fingers were on a line from her shoulder: arms straight, legs straight, toes pointed even in the large boots she wore.
“It was fine,” Charles said at last.
“That’s disappointing, isn’t it?” she said, and she wrapped her arm around herself and rotated her hips. “All that work for ‘fine.’ ”
“All what work?”
“Well, picking a fight with me. Finding out where he lived. Going there. All that work.”
“We didn’t fight.”
“Didn’t we?” she asked. She was looking out the window. That hadn’t been a fight. That hadn’t been an argument. They’d just been standing in the corner after Lionel left, talking quietly, and she had said: Go, you obviously want him. Go. And he had said, No, I don’t, stop being ridiculous. We’re here. We’re having a good time. They’d even left together, she and Charles. They had gone down the porch steps in the freshly falling snow, with the world perfectly still all around them, gone to the car and smiled at each other.
But on the way, she started again:
“I saw the way you looked at him.”
“I didn’t look at him in any way.”
“I saw it,” she said. “I saw it and I knew.”
“What does it matter?”
“It doesn’t. I don’t care what you do. But don’t lie to me about it.”
They’d gone back and forth like that all the way to Sophie’s apartment building, and when she asked if he wanted to come up, he said he’d go home and sleep, that he was feeling tired and a little drunk, and she said he shouldn’t drive in the snow that way, and he’d just sat there behind the wheel, the car idling, issuing exhaust into the night, until she got out and shut the door not hard, but firm, which to him had seemed sadder than anything else in the whole world, that she wasn’t even mad, that she was just concerned for him, and he was about to go do something shitty. But then she was gone, and he was in the car, and he texted Lionel at the number he’d watched him type into Sophie’s phone and had committed to memory, as if he knew even then what he was going to do.
Charles looked up from the album, and Sophie was sitting on the table with her legs crossed, looking back at him. The light, a sea of white in the window, lay over her like a shroud, a veil.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine—are you going to see him again?”
Charles thought of Lionel, his body not full of lines but yielding edges, curves. He seemed as if he’d bleed into the air around him. Last night he’d put his hands all over Lionel, gripped and tugged and pulled and sunk ever deeper. This morning, when Charles left, he had kissed Lionel and said he would be back, which at the time seemed like something to say. It was what you said after you slept with someone: See you around, see you next time, I’ll be back. It didn’t mean anything. But now, with the question put to him this way, he felt unsure what he’d meant by that—I’ll be back.
“Maybe,” Charles said. “Maybe not. It doesn’t matter.” He snapped the book closed and got up to hand it back to her. She took it from him, but he didn’t let go right away, so they were connected through the book. He stood between her open knees, holding the book, feeling its weight and the tension of her hand on the other side of it. He leaned down, kissed her softly.
“You stink,” she said.
“I know—do you care if I see him again?”
“No, Charlie. I don’t. But if you do, don’t lie to me.”
“Okay,” he said.
“I do like him,” Sophie said after a moment, and it startled Charles.
“How? You don’t know him. I don’t know him.”
“There’s something good and wounded about him. Like you.” Sophie rolled her shoulders and smiled. “I like him.”
Charles knew what she meant by that, how wounded and small and good Lionel seemed. Last night at the potluck, he had glimpsed some vast, open hurt in him. At the moment in the hallway outside the bathroom, Charles had seen how easy it was to hurt his feelings, to sting him. Now Sophie was accusing him of having the same quality, and Charles resented it.
“I’d say he’s more like you,” Charles said. “You’re the damaged one.” He playfully dug his finger into her side, and she slapped his forearm hard. The pain of it felt like a kindness.
“And what do you think you are?” she asked, wrapping her legs around his waist. They were alone in that corner of the library. It would have been possible, so very possible, for them to slide into one another, and Charles did feel something like thirst burning at the back of his throat.
“You calling me fucked up?” Charles leaned over her, and she just shrugged. She was utterly unintimidated by his size.
“Hardly a novel insight.” She put her head back and closed her eyes. She slid her thighs against his hips, and Charles got hard.
“This morning,” he said, “his window broke. Just dropped out of nowhere, apparently.” Sophie hummed in pleasure. “He was so freaked out. Like, totally melting down. So I cleaned it, swept the glass, you know? And it was the weirdest thing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person more exposed.”
Sophie’s eyes were still closed, but she had stopped humming. Charles stood there, her legs still wrapped around him, and he wondered if he should withdraw or continue. She crossed her ankles behind him, and pulled at him slightly, and he almost fell over onto her. He braced himself with his palms flat on the surface on which she was resting. She was warm and close.
“What then?” she asked.
“I picked him up, kind of like this,” he said, “and I took him back to bed.”
“You fuck him?” she asked.
“I did.”
“And you liked it.”
Sophie’s eyes slit open, glossy and bright. She arched her back slightly. Charles dipped his fingers between her legs and she sighed.
“I don’t like telling you this.”
Sophie touched his wrist gently, then, having located it, wrapped her fingers around him. She drew his hand up to the top of her tights, and then down into the space between her legs. She was damp and warm there, and she breathed out when his fingers entered her.
“What else?” she asked. “Tell me what else.”
She rocked against his fingers, and Charles thought of the morning, of Lionel’s kind eyes, of the way he’d shivered and clung, of how gentle, how sweet. It seemed a great betrayal to share that with Sophie now, but it was as though she could skim his thoughts, read him.
“He asked me to stay, this morning,” Charles whispered.
Sophie made a small, uncomplicated sound of pleasure, and she neatly plucked Charles’s fingers from her. She drew up straight and smiled at him.
“Don’t hurt him, Charlie,” she said. “He’s a good boy. He’s not like us.” She climbed from the high table, adjusted her tights. She collected the book.
Charles could smell Sophie and himself and Lionel.
“My shift is starting,” she said.
“I’ll walk you over.”
“That’s chivalrous,” Sophie said. She had pulled on her coat and her hat.
“It’ll just cost you one espresso.” Charles squatted briefly to get a knot out of his thigh. The brace held his knee securely. He stretched, and there was another solid pop in his spine. He felt loose.
“Your body sounds like an old man.”
Charles put her in a light headlock as they descended the stairs. They went out into the cold together, already talking about something else entirely.