I hear a rattle of wheels and hooves; a hearse—the hearse—pulls up before me and stops. The driver, dim against the half-blue sky, gestures me inside.

My hand trembles on the latch—I pull the door open and the compartment is empty. I climb in and not quite knowing why nor why not sit; falling in place not really under control, not used to climbing in and out of carriages. We go a short distance and then stop. Suddenly a hatch opens in the roof opposite me and the driver clambers down, with know-how if not with grace, into the carriage. He shuts the compartment and sits across from me with a piping sigh.

“Well,” he smiles, enjoying the softness. “Comfortable? How d’ye do?”

He puts out his hand.

“Orvar,” he says, “just Orvar, no mister.” As if he wanted to spare me any unnecessary trouble. He repeated my name as I pronounced it, nodding once and sweeping his face down and back, reaching into his jacket for something. His eyes seem alternately drawn and repelled by my face. He pulls out a small metal bottle wrapped in a leather sleeve, undoes the cap and offers it to me—“Tea?”

It’s brackish and slightly viscous, going down my throat in one cool lump. As he takes a neat swig, without touching his lips to the bottle, as I had done, I feel a sort of inner dislocation, and it’s as though a dirt robe were slid under and around me.

He gives me a friendly smile. “It’s a bit too strong, but it’s no poison.” Puts the bottle away and thrusts his fingers between each other.

“Well,” he says, talking down toward my shoes. “Well.”

I can hear the rasp and unrasp of his fingers against each other as he jams their webs together. I wait. His smile refreshes itself as a thought visibly occurs to him.

“She normally sits there,” he says, indicating the spot to my right as though she were there now. The seat is draped with a rich silver fur lined in peach satin. With a surprisingly strong pang I recognize its perfume, and it now seems more intimate a smell, as if it were rising still warm from her body. It seems somehow very dear to me. I tenderly imagine a woman’s body, with skin like peach satin, like dunes glowing orange in the sun.

“That’s her scent.”

“Oh,” I blink. I feel as though I’d been caught pulling off my clothes in a trance.

“Yes, she’s something of a fixture here in town. You may have heard of her?”—A guarded note entered in there.

“No,” I say. It’s true. I suspect he is probing for signs of guile in me.

“Well, then.” He sits back, pushing his shoulders into the cushions. He seems to have relaxed his suspicion, but his face has taken on a hardness I wouldn’t have expected of it. Cold twinges in my intestines from the tea, but it isn’t an entirely unwholesome sensation. I feel massive and solid, settled heavily in place like an anvil.