Had it not been for the pandemic, she might not have accepted Mr. and Mrs. Halstead’s business. The couple didn’t want to fix their marriage. Not really. They wanted to rage about who hadn’t done the dishes or helped with homework until they could agree that they’d tried but simply weren’t happy. She was the witness to their failed attempt, the person whom they’d point to later as evidence of their efforts and say, hey, we paid thousands to save our relationship, but it wasn’t salvageable.

Imani couldn’t turn down thousands at the moment.

“I think she had nothing to do with it,” Mrs. Halstead shouted outside the door.

Imani tugged the hem of her sweater so that it rested a little lower over her backside. She’d caught Mr. Halstead checking out her rear during their last session and didn’t want to tempt him into doing it again.

“Guilty people run off,” the husband countered. “People with nothing to hide stay and—”

The door’s creak cut him off. Mr. Halstead was dressed for work in a well-tailored wool coat, suit pants, and KN95, which was a stark contrast to his wife’s snakeskin-patterned leggings, blinding white ski jacket, and floral face covering. Imani silently wished that the woman had dressed more business casual. Mr. Halstead was already dismissive of his spouse’s financial contributions. Looking like the whole day could be spent on a yoga mat wouldn’t help the woman’s argument that her work was of equal importance.

Imani sat on the edge of her Eames lounge chair, positioned kitty-corner to the long couch at a nonconfrontational angle that still made clear she was part of the conversation. As she waited for the couple to sit down, she remembered looking up at the cement sky earlier that morning. Gray was the most prominent color in New York City between December and March. There was nothing particularly depressing about that fact. It was just the way the year started, a blank slate, which was what Imani needed her face to be.

Years earlier, her best friend had taught her the trick to controlling her micro-expressions. “You’re an open book,” Melissa had said, too many glasses of pinot grigio rendering her assessments brutal. “When you anticipate something bad, your brow scrunches and your nose flares like you’ve caught a whiff of day-old diaper. You need to keep a neutral face. There was this one film financier who had a reputation as being a misogynistic bully. Before he came in to talk to me, I pictured a wall so that my affect would be completely flat.”

“And was he as awful as everyone said?” Imani had asked.

“Worse,” Melissa had quipped. “By the end of our conversation, I was imagining that bastard buried in that wall.”

A smile crept behind Imani’s mask at the memory. “So, how are you both this week?” she asked the couple.