These things had the ring of some kind of importance, and yet if I was honest, at my core I felt no interest in them. It was disappointing that they interrupted me now. But before I could encourage my thoughts in an alternative direction, the song ended, there was a little peal of applause, and the concert was over.

Was that possible? I thought, astonished. Surely I had only been sitting here for … but then I realized that I had no sense of what amount of time had passed at all.

“How’d you like it?” said a female voice next to me. Even with my eyes closed I could tell it was the same person who’d sniffled loudly through the concert. Of course she would be just the sort of person who would also want to chat afterward, as we were all trapped in our seats. I opened my eyes briefly to look away from the voice and down the aisle, to see if there was any chance of escape, but at the other end of my row a gaunt and ancient man was refusing to be cajoled into a wheelchair, and it was clear there would be no egress for some time.

Begrudgingly, I turned to my neighbor—and stopped short. She was not, as I had imagined, an old woman. Neither was she a stranger. She was Kirstie.

“Oh,” I said, startled. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was you.”

Her face, so familiar, was nearer to mine than it ever had been before, all the features I’d seen only in passing were now uncomfortably close: the slightly shiny, slightly wet lower lip, and disappearing upper one, the nose, and the wide-set, mildly bulbous eyes, which now registered a look of surprise.

“You didn’t realize it was me?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

In the intervening silence I noticed that she was dressed not in her athletic wear but, uncharacteristically, in actual clothing: a gray, form-fitting skirt and a cream-colored blouse with a soft ruffle curving down the middle. The effect, on her sturdy frame, was jarring.

“But,” she went on, “I waved to you. I waved to show you that the seat next to mine was empty.”

“I can assure you,” I said icily, “if you did wave, I didn’t see it. I saw myself that this seat was empty.”

Kirstie stared at me. After a moment, she laughed faintly.

“Well,” she said. “Never mind. Did you enjoy it?” She gestured toward the semicircle and piano.

“Yes,” I said immediately. Although, I thought, I hadn’t liked it, no, or rather—

“Can you believe that they’d put this on right in front of the Children’s Wing?” said Kirstie.

“I’m sorry?”

“The Kindertotenlieder,” she said, shaking her head. She spoke as though the word were the whole of the reason. “There must have been some kind of clerical error.”