“That’s a cycle,” he said, “not a circle,” but he understood what she meant.
She nodded once, concluding the exchange.
“Anyway,” she said, gesturing them to Monet, “moving on.”
Aldo said nothing else until the end of the tour, though he waited until he was the last to remain.
“So,” Regan said, her gaze sliding to his to invite him back to her space of consideration. “What did you learn about me?”
“Not as much as I thought,” he said. “But also quite a bit more.”
“Helpful,” she said drily. “Anything specific?”
“You tell me,” he suggested, but then, “What did you learn about me? Because if the answer is nothing, then it wasn’t a conversation,” he pointed out. “Doesn’t count if you didn’t learn anything.”
She opened her mouth, then stopped.
“Let me ask you something,” she said. “How many people were on this tour?”
He thought about it. “Four?”
“Fifteen. Did you notice the girl looking at you?”
“What girl?”
“Right,” she said, “exactly. Also, are you aware that you’ve worn the same clothes all three times we’ve seen each other?”
He glanced down. “They’re clean.”
“That’s not what I asked,” she said briskly. “What about the couple next to you?”
He tried to conjure an image of the group and summoned only the sensation of overcrowding. “What about them?”
“They were glaring at you.” She looked delighted.
“I don’t see how any of this is relevant,” Aldo said, and then, to his surprise, Regan’s expression contorted in unbridled laughter, the sound of it dancing up to the ceiling and ricocheting back with a surprising warmth around his ears.
“Let’s just say I learned you’re very single-minded,” she told him, shaking her head. “You were very fixated on sorting out whatever it is you were trying to sort out,” she explained, “and I think at least half of the group wanted to murder you.”
That wasn’t out of the ordinary; Aldo had learned over time to ignore that sort of thing. Regan glanced at him for reciprocation, obviously expecting his answer to the same question—she seemed a person highly dependent on reciprocation—but he was unsure how to put it in words.
“Out with it,” she said, and he sighed.
“Well,” he said, “I learned something. I just don’t know what it is yet.”
He’d learned a particular expression on her face that she hadn’t made before.
“When you were talking about the painting, the Nocturne,” he clarified when she arched a brow, waiting. “I learned … something.”
She wasn’t impressed. “I don’t think it counts as learning it if you don’t know what you learned.”
“Well, I observed something that I suspect I’ll understand later. Maybe around conversation number four,” he guessed.
She watched him for a second, contemplating something, and then held out her hand.
“Give me your phone,” she said, and he dug it out of his pocket, settling it in her palm. She glanced down, shaking her head. “No password, huh?”
“Not too many secrets,” he said as she pulled up his contacts.
“Doubt that,” she murmured, and typed in what was ostensibly her phone number. “There,” she said, handing it back to him after calling the number she’d inputted. “This counts, by the way,” she added, glancing at him. He’d noticed that her expressions were more disarming the less thought she seemed to put into them, and this one was more reactionary than most. “This was conversation number two.”
“Right,” he said. That was fair. They’d both learned something, which met the necessary parameters.
“I don’t like surprises,” she told him. “I want to know about the next one in advance.”
That, too, was an understandable impulse.
“Why don’t you pick the next one?” he suggested.
She considered it.
“Tomorrow night,” she said. “Meet me outside? Around eight.”
He mentally rearranged his schedule, forming the usual points of mundanity around a new apex.
“Yes, I can do that,” he said, and she nodded, turning around.
“See you tomorrow,” she said, wandering away from him again.
* * *