Page 54

I, Blaine Solstice Cauthorne, who has made a very good living declining to do things, helped six strangers walk my mother's table across a terrace so that it would stop fighting them — because saying no would have required a conversation, and that conversation would have required a reason, and the only reason I had was I don't want to, which is not admissible anywhere.

Then they found the meadow. I heard about it before I saw it, because my father came into the kitchen at a speed I have not witnessed from him in a decade.

"Sol. There’s a young man in the cathedral asking me whether the meadow is shoppable."

"Whether it's what?"

"Shoppable. I said I didn't understand the question and he said he'd rephrase it, and then he said the same word again, more slowly." My father put both hands flat on the island. "What does it mean?"

"I believe it means whether a viewer could purchase something they see in the frame."

My father stared at me.

"Purchase what," he said. "The trees?"

"I don't know."

"Blaine. Could a person actually buy those trees?"

"I genuinely don't know." I shrugged.

"They're four hundred years old." Dad’s eyes widened.

"I'm aware of how old the trees are."

He stood there a moment, breathing slowly. Then he took a bottle of something out of the refrigerator, looked at it, put it back, and said, "I'm going to go and be somewhere else," and left.

Which is when I saw Gregory through the window. He was crossing the top of the meadow with a coil of cable over one shoulder, in a pink shirt with the sleeves shoved up, saying something to one of the grip crew. And I was across that kitchen and at the window before I had authorized my own feet.

Two days ago I would have described what I did next as observing. I stood at my mother's kitchen window and watched my ex-husband walk across a field for a period of time I am not going to specify, and at the end of it a woman from Ascendant said "excuse me?" behind me twice before I heard her.

"Sorry," I said. "What can I do for you?"

"Is there anywhere we could plug in eleven laptops?"

* * *

Zephyr was holding court in the sun room.

That isn't my phrase. That's the phrase used by a man from Ascendant named Tobias, who came into the kitchen and said, with genuine reverence, "Sorry — is it all right if we go in? Zephyr's holding court."

Nine of them were in there. Nine, in a room with six chairs, which meant four were on the floor, which they were doing happily. My mother had taken the good armchair and installed herself beside Zephyr like a queen consort. Somebody had brought in the ceramic bowl from the foam case and set it on the table between them. Nobody had explained what the bowl was for and nobody asked.

And a man I am confident my ex-husband hired sat in the middle of it.

"—and the thing is, the thing is," Tobias was saying, "we've been so focused on the practice as a deliverable—"

"Mm," said Zephyr.

"—like, as a product—"

"Mm."

"—and what you're pointing at is that the container has to come first."

Zephyr turned his water glass a quarter-turn.

"I have not pointed at anything," he murmured. "You have simply stopped looking away."