Chapter 15 · Chapter 15

The latch went over the way a good latch does. One sound, and then the room stopped asking.

I stood in the middle of the wing with the deed still folded into my sleeve and let it finish. Two lamps. The Oud I had carried in on my own clothes, sitting on the air as though it had been paid for by someone else. My shoes at the threshold, toes to the wall, because a carpet is not a floor and I had been raised by people who knew the difference.

He did not speak for a while. That was the Heba, and it wanted nothing from a voice. He stood with his back to the shut door and looked at me the way a man looks at a page he has already read twice and intends to sign.

"Take it out," he said.

I knew what he meant. I drew the deed from my sleeve and laid it on the low table, squared to the edge, the folds the clerk had pressed still holding.