Cyril took a straight, and as Aristide lit it for him he glanced at Markert to see how he’d taken that drubbing. Not well; he’d gone a shade of purple not so different from Aristide’s ascot.

“Thanks,” said Cyril, knowing it wouldn’t go easy with him later. “He never does that for me.”

“And it’s rubbing off, I see. You’re much chattier now than you were at Solstice.”

That brought him up short, like looking down midway across a chasm. To be reminded he was … making conversation? Flirting? It spiked him where he stood.

“Dear, dear,” said Aristide. “Hit a sore spot, have I?”

Cyril inhaled smoke and let it sit too long, so that he was dizzy when he said, “Maybe I’ve been a little lonely.”

“With me to keep you company?” asked Markert. “Sure you have.”

Rage looked better on Aristide now than it ever had, and it had always looked good. A length of iron rod rose up his spine, and his chin flicked to a haughty angle that made light flash across his spectacles. One stiff kid-gloved finger pointed at the door. In withering tones he said, “Get out. And send someone who’s less inclined to be snotty.”

After a piano wire pause, to Cyril’s great surprise, Markert did as he was told. There was a brief exchange with someone in the office—with the door open and his eyes still on Aristide and Cyril—and then he traded places with his colleague Dorfner, a taciturn man who appeared perpetually worried.

How much money had Aristide parted with, on his way in? And what did he have to say, that was worth such a sum?

“Why don’t you stutter anymore?” asked Cyril, because it was an easier question than any others banging around inside his skull.

Aristide gave him a curious look that said he understood exactly the tactic Cyril had just deployed. “I am well aware that with increasing age comes the potential for absurdity. Therefore, I have … dampened my affectations, somewhat. I shouldn’t like to be taken for a clown.” Despite the rouge and pastel cigarettes, he said it without irony. There was none to be had: His presence did not admit of it.

“It never made you sound like that. You were never that.”

Aristide shrugged: a liquid motion beneath his mink. “It was my character, then.”

“I always liked it.”

“I know you did. But do you see a stage?”

“You never needed a stage,” said Cyril. “Would you do it for me now?”

He raised an eyebrow. “What do you want me to say?”

If it was an opening, it was one he didn’t know how to take. “A bit of one of your routines, maybe. From the Bee.”

It was the wrong thing. “Cyril, I—”