Chapter 113: A Voice Without a Stage

Celeste closed the folder before anyone could ask what the last song meant.

"That is as far as we get today."

Logan nodded, although curiosity had already supplied three questions. Beside the stage, Leila put the case upright. She did it with the efficient relief of someone who had learned to recognize the point at which a useful meeting became an exhausting one.

Nadia suggested lunch in the small dining room. Celeste accepted on the condition that nobody called it a working lunch.

"I’m capable of chewing without explaining my career."

"Then you’re ahead of several men who have eaten here," Nadia said.

Caroline had to return to Bright Way. Before leaving, she gave Logan two things: the contact details Celeste had authorized her to share with the advisers, and a look that meant he should not turn lunch into a promise. He told her he understood. She touched his wrist briefly, smiled, and went.

Celeste watched the gesture without comment.

The dining room was nearly empty. A man with a laptop occupied the window table, guarding a single cup of coffee as if the staff might confiscate it. Nadia led them to a round table at the back. Adrian joined them after locking the sound cupboard, bringing a notebook he concealed badly beneath his phone.

"No working lunch," Celeste reminded him.

"This is a shopping list."

"Then I hope your groceries have good acoustics."

He put it away.

For twenty minutes, they talked about terrible hotels they had encountered elsewhere. Leila described a room in which the bedside light could only be switched off from the corridor. Celeste remembered a bathroom mirror that faced the wall. Adrian topped both with a touring apartment whose owner had listed a ladder as a staircase.

Logan had fewer stories. Until recently, a bad hotel had been an expense he could not afford to experience.

"You look as if you’re trying to invent one," Nadia said.

"I was deciding whether sleeping through a bus stop qualified."

"Depends where you woke up."

"Somewhere with a very disappointed driver."

Celeste laughed. It was lower than he expected, roughened at the edge in a way the recordings never captured. He found himself watching how her expression changed before she spoke. She could make someone feel that the next sentence was intended solely for them, even with four people at the table.

She caught him looking.

"Something on my face?"

"No. I was wondering whether you do that deliberately."

"You’ll have to be more specific. I do a great deal deliberately."

"Make the room wait before you answer."

Leila covered her mouth with her napkin. Nadia looked down at her plate.

Celeste studied him, then let the silence continue long enough to become an answer.

"Occasionally," she said.

Logan grinned. "Fair."

After lunch, the laptop customer stopped Celeste near the doorway. He apologized twice before asking whether she was the singer his wife loved. Celeste said that depended on which singer his wife loved.

The man named her second album, then a song that had not appeared in the popular recordings Logan had found. Celeste’s expression softened.

"She used to play it when we drove home from visiting her mother," he said. "Long journey. We’d argue over the route and then she’d put that on."

"Did it stop the arguments?"

"Not remotely. We argued in time."

Celeste laughed again. When he asked for a photograph, she agreed and stood beside him beneath the window. Leila took it on his phone. He thanked them without asking for anything else.

Only after he left did Logan notice Nadia standing very still.

"What?" he asked quietly.

"Nothing. I’d forgotten what it was like when people came through that door happy about something."

Before he could answer, a waiter appeared with a question about Thursday’s reduced restaurant service. Nadia excused herself. The change she had announced on Friday was no longer a line in a budget. Somebody wanted to know which shift he would lose.

Logan stayed where he was. He could not fix every consequence by reaching for his phone.

Celeste watched Nadia disappear into the office.

"She’s always hated that part."

"Being responsible for it?"

"Being unable to make everybody’s week better. The distinction costs her sleep."

Leila took a call outside. Adrian went to retrieve Celeste’s coat. For the first time since she arrived, Logan stood alone with the singer.

"How long have you known her?" he asked.

"Long enough to know she won’t thank me for answering that. And you?"

"About a week."

Celeste’s eyebrows rose. "You move quickly."

"Nothing has been signed."

"I wasn’t asking about signatures."

He glanced toward the office, and she smiled as if he had confirmed something sufficiently entertaining.

"Nadia is quite capable of making her own mistakes," she said. "She doesn’t require me to inspect you at the door."

"That is reassuring."

"Don’t be reassured. I’m still deciding whether I enjoy you."

"Would buying another album help?"

"Only if you listen to it."

There was an ease in flirting with her that surprised him. She gave him no reason to mistake it for a promise. Still, when Adrian returned with her coat, Logan felt the small disappointment of a conversation ending too soon.

Celeste accepted the coat but did not put it on.

"One more thing," she said. "Can we go back to the hall? Just for a minute."

Nadia rejoined them as they reached the stage. Whatever had happened in the office remained in the slight tightness around her mouth, but she listened when Celeste asked whether the upright piano was kept in tune.

"Not recently enough to make you a promise."

Celeste pressed a few keys and winced at one. "Honest answer. Dangerous instrument."

Adrian offered the small keyboard from the equipment cupboard. She shook her head.

"No need. I want to try something without making a production of it."

She asked Leila to stand near the back wall and Logan to sit halfway down the room. Nadia remained by the aisle. Adrian sat on the edge of the stage, hands folded, making a deliberate show of leaving every switch untouched.

Celeste sang a verse from the song the customer had mentioned.

Logan recognized neither melody nor words, which meant he had nothing to compare her to. There was only the woman standing beneath the work lights, one hand resting on the piano. She began with a lightness that almost made him smile. By the final phrase, he had forgotten why.

The song concerned an ordinary journey home. It could have become sentimental. Instead, she made the repeated destination sound slightly different each time, until Logan found himself thinking of a kitchen that no longer belonged to anyone he could visit.

His aunt had always left the light above the stove on when she expected him late.

He had not thought of that light in months.

Celeste stopped.

Nobody applauded at first. The absence lasted only a second, but Logan saw her shoulders change. Not collapse. Prepare.

He started to raise his hands, then realized she was looking at Leila.

"Too low?"

"No," Leila said. "You came off the last note early."

"I know."

"Then why ask about the key?"

Celeste looked away. Adrian watched his shoes. Nadia took a step closer to the stage but did not speak.

The woman who had handled lunch so effortlessly was suddenly furious with a note nobody else had expected her to hold.

"It’s been a while," she said.

Logan lowered his hands.

"I wasn’t waiting for a longer note."

Her attention came to him sharply. "You don’t have to be kind."

"I was thinking about someone. That’s why I didn’t clap."

The room settled around his answer. He regretted speaking for a moment, because it felt too personal to leave unexplained and too private to explain properly.

Celeste gave him the choice.

"Someone you’d rather keep to yourself?"

"My aunt. She died."

"I’m sorry."

He nodded. There was no good response to that which would not turn the afternoon into something it had not intended to be.

Celeste moved her hand from the piano. "Would you mind if I did the verse again?"

"No."

This time she did not reach for the final note in the same way. The phrase ended more quietly. Logan could not have explained which version a trained listener would prefer. He knew that the second left him wanting to hear what came next.

When she stopped, Nadia clapped once, softly, and the others joined her.

Celeste looked embarrassed by the small sound.

"There. Now you’ve had more than the meeting required. Don’t put it on an invoice."

"We charge separately for emotional inconvenience," Nadia said.

The joke allowed everybody to move again.

Outside, while Leila brought the car around, Celeste stood beside Logan beneath the entrance canopy.

"Your aunt," she said. "Was it a particular line?"

He shook his head. "A light she used to leave on. I don’t know why."

"You don’t have to know why."

"Do people tell you things like that often?"

"Sometimes. Usually after telling me I look shorter in person."

He smiled. She touched his forearm, briefly and warmly.

"I’m glad she found you for a moment."

Then the car arrived, and Celeste was asking Leila whether they had time to stop for coffee before the drive home. She left without demanding any more of the feeling she had uncovered.

Logan watched the car until it turned out of sight.

"She does that," Nadia said behind him.

He turned. "Sings?"

"Makes people feel that they’ve been privately understood. Then asks where the nearest good coffee is."

Something in her voice made him pay closer attention.

"Are you warning me?"

"No. I’m deciding whether I should be annoyed with myself."

He waited.

She leaned against the entrance wall, folding her arms. The afternoon light caught a loose strand of hair near her cheek. He wanted to brush it back and knew, with unusual clarity, that wanting was not permission.

"You were looking at her," Nadia said.

"Yes."

"That was almost offensively quick."

"Would a slow answer be better?"

"Probably not."

Her mouth curved, but the smile faded before becoming comfortable.

"I haven’t decided anything about us. There isn’t an us to object on behalf of. I know that."

"You can still tell me what bothered you."

"Perhaps I enjoyed being the woman who distracted you at dinner more than I intended."

Logan looked toward the street, giving himself a second to avoid saying something polished and useless. It would have been easy to promise that nobody else distracted him. It would also have been a lie she had already caught.

"You did," he said. "You still do. I don’t think pretending otherwise would make this easier."

"You have an irritating habit of answering only the question you can answer honestly."

"Caroline would be pleased to hear that. She has been waiting for evidence."

Nadia laughed despite herself.

The waiter appeared at the dining room door, saw them talking, and withdrew. Nadia noticed immediately.

"I need to finish that conversation."

"All right."

She stayed a moment longer.

"Tomorrow, before we discuss anything resembling a partnership, I want to speak to you alone. About what you are actually asking me for."

"Business or personal?"

"Both. Separately. I think that is becoming necessary."

He agreed. She went inside without touching him.

On the way to Bright Way, Logan called Caroline. He told her the meeting had gone well, that no performance had been promised, and that Celeste’s advisers would need to clarify the existing restrictions before anyone announced a date.

Then he told her Nadia wanted a personal conversation.

Caroline was silent for a moment.

"How do you feel about that?"

"Interested. Nervous."

"Good. It means you’ve noticed she’s a person."

"You make that sound like a recent discovery."

"Some discoveries need repeating."

There was warmth in her answer, but he heard fatigue too. He asked whether she had eaten. She had, standing beside a delivery that arrived without half its labels.

"Dinner tomorrow?" he asked.

"Thursday. Tomorrow I want my own evening."

He checked his calendar before saying yes. When they ended the call, he left the empty Wednesday evening untouched.

At Bright Way, the first thing waiting for him was an ordinary supplier question. The second was Priya’s revised pilot budget. He opened both before looking for another Celeste recording.

Her song stayed with him anyway.

By the time Nadia’s message arrived, the sky outside his office had darkened.

Ten tomorrow. No advisers for the first half hour. Bring your honest answers.

Logan read it twice.

For once, the system could offer him no advantage he wanted to use.