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At seven, she dressed for stage. At eight, she was at the staff door. Vera was in the back of the bar, speaking to Camille. She looked over and gave Emilia a sign with her hand, then returned to the sound sheet. At the cloakroom, Léa-the-Younger had a pencil behind each ear tonight and no magazine.
“Busy,” she said.
“August is over.”
“Apparently.”
“Is Vera surviving?”
“Vera always survives. She makes surviving into work for other people.”
“That also sounds like Vera.”
Léa tore the token and handed it over. “Thirty-six.”
The set was full for August. The room had begun to refill before September. Camille mixed harder. The hundred-euro woman did not come. The silver-gray crop stayed through the last song. A woman Emilia had never seen before placed a folded twenty into the waistband of her trousers and said nothing. The body worked, the stage worked under her feet, the lights worked from above and the side. At the end, Emilia walked down, went back, cooled herself with her own towel and changed.
No one was at the dressing-room door.
At home after midnight, she opened the cabinet and took out the box of figs. Two remained. She ate one standing at the counter and wrapped the last one again.
The Liv-ping came the next day, mid-afternoon.
The city was at its hottest. Emilia had opened the kitchen window and the bedroom window and gained nothing from either. The street below had gone almost silent. Even the bakery had closed early. She was sitting on the tile floor with the phone beside the Carson when it lit.