Lydia enters Graziella’s, which she chose as the venue for the meeting due to its mirrored panels all along the walls: if she sits facing one of these she’ll be able to see everything that’s going on in the coffeehouse from all angles, she can see if there’s anyone watching her, she can make sure Roman doesn’t pretend to head for the bathroom and then sneak out. Admittedly the panels are those tricked-out mirrors which process the reflection so it shows the café as it might have been in the 1950s, and if you look in the mirror you see yourself dressed in period attire. But it’ll do the job, and she is quietly pleased with herself for having thought of it.
As she sits down and orders a tea and a slice of cheesecake, Lydia glances up at her reflection, which is wearing a polka-dot dress she wouldn’t be seen dead in. This is the mirror’s default selection for anyone above a size 12: fucking polka dots. It’s given her a nice swept-across hairstyle, though, and she likes the lipstick. She remembers the cleanskin kids she went drinking with in Hidden Palace and how she told them it was different being here, and it is—so it seems strange how places like this try so hard to make it feel like you’re in a sim of Manhattan as it was, which you could easily do at home.
Lydia is so caught up in these thoughts she’s startled when Roman walks up to her table and greets her. She actually watched his reflection walk through the café, but didn’t notice it was him because his reflection is wearing a beautifully cut three-piece suit and a hat. In reality Roman is wearing lemon-yellow shorts and a matching waistcoat with no shirt underneath it. As she glances in the mirror she notices she has cheesecake on her lower lip and she’s about to wipe it off with a napkin, but Roman leans in to kiss her on the cheek and she has a sudden intrusive thought that he might lick the cheesecake off and she flinches away before his lips make contact.
“Sorry,” says Roman, perturbed by her reaction.
“No, I’m sorry—I just remembered I’ve got a cold, and you shouldn’t … do that.”
“Oh. Well. That was a close one, huh,” he replies, sitting down, unconvinced by her unconvincing lie.
“Thanks for meeting me so quickly.”
“I was thrilled when you called.”
I bloody bet you were, Lydia thinks, and while he orders a coffee she wonders how to play this. It might be helpful to let him settle in first, develop a false sense of security? So she asks him about his work: He’ll be flattered and let his guard down. He talks about sales figures and campaigns for Dancers of the Sun but she doesn’t take it in, instead rehearsing what she’s going to say and judging when exactly to say it. She’ll make her move after his coffee arrives: it will prompt a break in the conversation and he’ll be wrong-footed.
The waitress comes to their table (looking the same in the mirror as she does in real life, the uniforms have that 1950s styling anyway) and puts a coffee in front of Roman. Lydia already has her hand on her bag, waiting for him to stop talking so she can flourish the inkout and demand he explain himself. But he doesn’t pause for breath, even as he puts shuga in his coffee and stirs it, barely looking down at what he’s doing, talking about how popular the novel’s auxiliary fic has been and how he cut that particular deal. It just goes on.
Eventually, when Roman considers his coffee has cooled sufficiently, he pauses in the middle of a sentence to take a sip, and Lydia slaps the inkout on the table and blurts “Recognize this?” She’d hoped to pull this off in a much cooler, more controlled way, but it is what it is.
Roman is startled, but very clearly does recognize it. Lydia can practically see his stomach knotting. He looks up and says, “Should I?”
“I think so.”
“I don’t…” He tails off, rereading the inkout. “Who wrote this?”
“You did.”
And look, right on cue, here comes the forced you-can’t-be-serious laugh. He’s going to ask her if this is a joke and actually she can’t bear to listen, it’s so predictable it’s like talking to a really cheap ayaie, so she picks up the inkout, says “You won’t mind if I send it to your boss then,” stands and turns to leave—
And in a voice that starts loud and abruptly goes quiet, he says “NO, SIT down…”
Lydia has a glance around to see if anyone’s noticed this exchange. A few people have. Good. She sits back down.
Seething, Roman looks up at her. “You’re not going to commission a translation of Dancers of the Sun, are you?”
She laughs. “That’s the first thing you want to know?”
He makes an exasperated grunt. “I already told the author I was meeting with you about it—we’ve always felt the book has real crossover potential, literally universal themes—and it’ll be embarrassing if I have to go back to her and tell her it’s not happening.”
“More embarrassing than being outed as a bigot?”
“I’m not a—Look, can you just tell me if the translation’s happening?”
“Of course it fucking isn’t. I don’t have the authority to commission one, and even if I did, I didn’t like the book, I found it ponderous. I didn’t actually finish it.” It’s unnecessary to tell him this, but she enjoys doing so. She’s especially satisfied to have alighted on the word ponderous.
“So what’s this about? Blackmail?”
“No.” This hadn’t occurred to her. But now that he’s mentioned it, she fleetingly considers it: How rich is this guy? How important is it to him that nobody knows he sent this? But no, she has a job to do. “I want to know why you sent it.”
He shrugs. “I don’t really remember. I was pretty wasted, I was in a shitty mood, it seemed funny at the time. You know how it is with trollboxes, once you install it, it does all that intrusive shit, looks at your other activity and suggests who you might like to troll?”
Lydia shakes her head. “I’ve never used a trollbox.”
Roman raises an eyebrow, which might be a gesture of skepticism, then continues: “It’s impossible to turn off. I swear it pings you more when you’re drunk or whatever. Anyway I do remember sending it but as for the exact thought process … I dunno.” He waves a hand in the air.
“You do get how serious this all is, right? Less than a fortnight ago you threatened him, now he’s dead.”
He sits up straighter, glares at her. Genuine surprise this time? Interesting. “Hey, look—you can’t possibly think I had anything to do with it?”
“What am I supposed to think?”
“I didn’t threaten him—look at the message. I said people meant him harm. It’s a warning, not a threat. And I was right, wasn’t I?”
“So how’d you know?”
He laughs hollowly. “I don’t have any special insight. Obviously people mean him harm because he’s, like … one of them. I’m sure there are people who mean you harm, just by association.”
“Oh charming.”
“I’m just being honest. I don’t think it’s a good thing, or—”
“Then why send the message? You still haven’t explained why someone in your position would send a message like that—”
“He was ghosting me,” Roman snaps.
“Ghosting you?”
“I was chasing up that contact, trying to get a meeting with him, and he was ignoring me.”
“He was always busy—”
“We’re all busy, all the time.” He’s raising his voice. “People think it’s all ayaied now and I sit in my workspace all day reading books and jerking off but it all just makes more work. Everything that was meant to lighten the load makes more work, it just makes more shit for you to deal with. Everything’s squeezed and the margins are tiny and that bony motherfucker you used to work for—god rest his soul—could make such a difference to us, to me, and he fucking ghosted me.” This outburst has not gone unnoticed by other patrons of the café, and Roman falls quiet, looking down at the tabletop.
“So you just wanted to scare him because you were pissed off with him?”
“I didn’t really think about scaring him. I didn’t think he’d even read it. I get ten times more notes than I can deal with. If something looks like it’s bullshit I don’t read past the second line.”
“Why send it then?”
“Don’t you ever just want to vent?”
“Yeah but I do it inside my head.”
“See, I think that’s unhealthy. You need an outlet.”
“I could use you as a fucking outlet, mate.”
He laughs, then composes himself. “I’m serious. You’ve been through some grim shit. You need to look after yourself.”
“How d’you know what I’ve been through? You’ve not asked me a thing about myself since you sat down.”
“It’s all over the feeds. I saw a recon of the moment you found his body—eeesh.”
“There’s a recon of that?”
“Yeah but the girl in it doesn’t look like you. They probably didn’t want to get hammered over the image rights.”
Lydia no longer wants to be having this conversation. “Look, if you know anything that might help us work out who might have killed him—”
“Isn’t that kind of the cops’ job?”
“Well yeah, but my boss is dead so what else am I going to do with my time?”
“Read the books I sent you? But no, I—” He pauses. “Actually when I was writing that message, I was sort of pastiching something someone sent me.” He pulls open his scroll.
“So that wasn’t how you normally write?”
He winces. “Please. I wanted it to look like a real one. And it’s not like I edited it or anything, plus I was high…” He scrolls down, then nods. “OK, yep—tell no one I gave you this, this is very unprofessional.” And he flicks a document across to her glasses.