She turned her attention to the switchboard, pressing the button repeatedly, as if the lift would hurry up and carry her away.
Roman joined her just before the doors closed.
* * *
“I thought you said this place had the best pickles,” Roman said, twenty minutes later. He was sitting on a park bench beside Iris, unwrapping his sandwich from its newspaper. A thin, sad pickle rested on top of the bread.
“No, that’s the other place,” Iris said. “They make the best everything, but they’re closed on Mir’s Day.”
Thinking of the gods and the days of the week made her mind stray to the letter, currently hiding in her bag, resting on the bench between her and Roman. She had been shocked when she had woken up to it. A literal pile of paper, full of a myth she was hungry to learn. A myth where the eithrals were mentioned.
She wondered who this correspondent was. How old were they? What gender were they? What time were they?
“Hmm.” Roman set aside the pickle and took a bite of his sandwich.
“Well?” Iris prompted.
“Well what?”
“Is the sandwich to your liking?”
“It’s good,” Roman said, taking another bite. “It would be better if that sad excuse of a pickle hadn’t made part of the bread soggy.”
“That’s high praise, coming from you.”
“What exactly are you implying, Winnow?” he countered sharply.
“That you know exactly what you want. Which isn’t a bad thing, Kitt.”
They continued to eat, the silence awkward between them. Iris was beginning to regret inviting him until he broke the quiet with a shocking admission.
“All right,” he said with a sigh. “I feel compelled to apologize for something I said a few months ago. When you stepped into the office for the first time, I let my prejudice get in the way, thinking that because you failed to graduate from school you would give me no trouble.” Roman paused, opening his sandwich to rearrange the tomato and the cheese and to toss away the slice of red onion. Iris watched him with slight fascination. “I’m sorry for making assumptions about you. It was wrong of me.”
She didn’t know how to reply. She hadn’t anticipated Roman Condescending Kitt ever apologizing to her. Although she supposed she never thought she’d be sitting beside him in the park, eating a sandwich with him either.
“Winnow?” He glanced at her, and for some strange reason, he sounded nervous.
“Were you trying to run me off?” she asked.
“At first, yes,” he said, brushing imaginary crumbs off his lap. “And then when you nabbed the first assignment and I read your article … I realized you were far more than I had imagined. That my imagination was quite narrow. And you deserved to be promoted should you earn it.”
“How old are you, Kitt?”
“How old do I look to you?”
She studied his face, the slight stubble on his chin. Now that she was sitting so close to him, she could see the cracks in his “perfect” appearance. He hadn’t shaved that morning—she figured he had run out of time—and her eyes moved to his shock of sable hair. It was thick and wavy. She could also tell he had risen from bed and sprinted to work, which made her envision him in bed, and why was she thinking about that?
Her silence had taken too long.
Roman met her gaze, and she glanced away, unable to hold his stare.
“You’re nineteen,” she guessed. “But you have an old soul, don’t you?”
He only laughed.
“I take it that I’m correct,” Iris said, resisting the temptation to laugh with him. Because of course he would have one of those sorts of laughs. The ones you couldn’t hear and not feel in your own chest. “So. Tell me about her.”
“Who? My muse?”
“Your fiancée. Elinor A. Little,” Iris said, although she was intrigued to know what, exactly, inspired him. “Unless she is your muse, and in that case, how utterly romantic.”
Roman fell quiet, his half-eaten sandwich on his lap. “No, she’s not. I’ve met her once. We exchanged polite pleasantries and sat across from each other at dinner with our families.”
“You don’t love her?”
He stared into the distance. Iris thought he wouldn’t reply until he asked, “Is it possible to love a stranger?”
“Perhaps in time,” Iris said, wondering why she was giving him hope. “Why are you marrying her, if not for love?”
“It’s for the good of our families.” His tone became cold. “Now. You’ve graciously offered to help me with my article. What sort of assistance would you like to give me, Winnow?”
Iris set her sandwich aside. “Can I see the notes you’ve gathered so far?”
Roman hesitated.
“Never mind,” she said with a wave of her hand. “That’s rude of me to ask. I would never show you my notes either.”
He wordlessly reached into his bag and handed her his notepad.
Iris began to sift through the pages. He was methodical, organized. He had plenty of facts and numbers and dates. She read a few lines of his first draft, and she must have made a pained expression because Roman fidgeted.
“What is it?” he asked. “What have I done wrong?”
Iris closed the notepad. “You haven’t done anything wrong yet.”
“These notes are verbatim, Winnow. I asked the parents about their missing daughter. Those are their answers. I’m trying to express such in my writing.”
“Yes, but there’s no feeling. There’s no emotion, Kitt,” Iris said. “You asked the parents things like ‘When was the last time you heard from your daughter?’ ‘How old is she?’ ‘Why did she want to fight for Enva?’ And you have the facts, but you didn’t ask them how they’re doing or what advice they would give for someone experiencing a similar nightmare. Or even if there’s something the paper or community can do for them.” She handed him his notepad. “I think for this particular article, your words should be sharp as knives. You want the readers to feel this wound in their chest, even though they’ve never experienced a missing loved one.”
Roman flipped his notepad open to a fresh page. He rummaged for a pen in his bag and then asked, “May I?”
Iris nodded. She watched as he wrote, his handwriting turning her words into elegant ink.
“You said that your brother is missing,” he said. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“He enlisted five months ago,” Iris said. “Forest and I were always very close. So when he promised to write to me, I knew he would. But week after week passed, and his letters never came. So then I waited for a letter from his commanding officer, which they send when soldiers are killed or go missing at the front. That never came either. So I’m left with this fragile thread of hope that Forest is safe but unable to communicate. Or perhaps he’s engaged in a dangerous mission and can’t risk contact. Those are the things I tell myself, at least.”
“And what does that feel like?” Roman asked. “How would you describe it?”
Iris was quiet for a beat.
“You don’t have to reply,” he hurried to add.