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A man is playing near the bar. Nothing showy, just enough to sit under the room.

“You want to stay?”

“For a little while.”

We take a small table where we can see him, and I sit beside her this time, and her knee settles against mine.

She watches his hands. Not his face.

“You play.”

“Yes.”

“That sounded like information I was supposed to have.”

“You never asked.”

“I didn’t know there was a piano question.”

“There is an upright in my apartment.”

I think of the living room. “Under the cover.”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Since I was six. My mother taught until her hands stopped letting her, and then she taught me anyway, badly, out of a chair.”

That’s more than I have gotten out of her about her own life in three months, and she hands it over while watching a stranger’s hands on a keyboard.

“Will you play for me?”

“Yes.”

I had four other answers ready. “Yeah?”

“You have asked me for very little since November that was not about your shoulder.” She turns her glass again. “Yes.”

“When?”

“When there is nobody else in the house.”

I put my arm along the back of her chair and say nothing at all, because anything I say now is going to be worse than that sentence.

A minute later she leans into my shoulder and stays there. Her thumb keeps time against her own knee and doesn’t stop.

There’s a message in my phone about a band on Broadway and the one word she answered it with. I left it there and sent nothing after it.

The player finishes. Somebody at the bar claps late and the room goes back to talking over itself.

Astrid sits up.

“You sent me a message about a band.”

“I did.”

“On a Thursday.”