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“What’s your name?” I said.
I regretted it before the words were finished.
The room changed. The cat stepped back, her hand slid off my chest, and for a second she was just a woman in a mask who had been told something she’d said at the door. She was not cross. She was very still.
“That,” she said, “is the only question I won’t answer.”
“Sorry. God. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’d rather you ask than guess.” Her voice stayed soft and level, the voice of someone who has said this to a lot of men and forgiven most of them. “But it’s rule two, and I wrote the rules. Masks stay on. Names stay secret. If either of those is a problem for you, there’s a staircase, a garden, and a taxi rank, and nobody will think any less of you.”
I looked at her. At the whiskers, the ears, the generous mouth. At the bare strip of thigh the slit had shown me. I wanted to know her name very badly and I wanted her very badly, and for the first time in my life I could see those were two separate things.
“If you want to stay,” she said, “ask me something else. If you don’t, say goodnight, and I’ll open the door.”
She let go of the handle. Her chest rose and fell. She was waiting, perfectly polite, perfectly sure of herself, for what I’d choose.