I set my magazine aside and said, “Thank you, my dove,” and pecked her cheek.

The peeled wrapping revealed a cream album jacket. A slate-grey circle with a straight line underneath, akin to an underline used for emphasis, was its only adornment.

“Dear?” I said.

“Scelsi,” Cara replied, turning from me to remove her coat. “Put it on.”

I broke the seal and heeded.

What came leaking through the speakers was a warbled and creeping harmonic of brass, of strings being tediously bowed. I stood holding the record sleeve. Something cold and shapeless raised the hair on the back of my neck.

“This music,” I began.

“Do you like it?”

“It sounds as though it’s…melting.”

“It’s called Anahit. Scelsi wrote it for Venus. That’s why I bought it for you.”

I must have been visibly confused, for Cara explained that this music, which I found remote and coldly firm as a headstone, seemed to her to illustrate a kinship between myself and the composer.

“In what way?” I asked, feeling the edge creeping into my voice.

“Just listen. Scelsi felt the same about women as you do.”

“Did he?” I asked, now spinning in one of Cara’s eddies of insinuation.

“Did he?” she repeated before regressing into the unlit kitchen.

A few moments later the scream of a kettle was added to the Italian’s razor-wire concerto.

Cara then told me something about Scelsi that I have never forgotten.

It was only natural that I felt impelled to reciprocate her gift, but after a few fruitless hours gazing through boutique windows and pacing the airless labyrinths of antique shop after antique shop I began to question exactly how well I knew my fiancée. Of all the curios I’d spotted, none seemed to represent her. But then, how well did the Scelsi recording represent me? Rather poorly in my candid opinion.

I then began down a lane of thought that I admit I’m less than proud of taking. I started to suspect that Cara’s motive was less about gifting and more about challenging. The outré concerto was a gauntlet of sorts, a distorted mirror that was designed to disconcert me about not only her but also myself.

As I said, I am not proud of the way I searched for Cara’s motives in dark corners.

I’m even less proud of the fact that I decided to best her at this game of malice that I projected upon her. But it was as it was. Far be it from me to burnish reality. If the game was to be Presents Beyond the Pale, I knew just the bauble to use for my next play.

3.