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By Root 854 0

that they were both staring at the stage with great concentration, no doubt wondering if they had properly aired the apartment, made the bed, returned all the lacy scraps of underwear to their proper drawers. Marina, who had folded the shawl in her lap once the lights went down because it was less than perfectly cool in this third-tier box, considered the visage of her naked shoulders and back that were presently obstructing Dr. Swenson’s view of the stage, the complicated twist of her hair held in place with two black sticks ornamented with tiny gold fans as if she were a Chinese princess. She imagined herself in a hospital room, sitting at a patient’s bedside in her dark gray silk, and suddenly Dr. Swenson came into the room behind her. I was paged, Marina said to her, trying to explain the lack of fabric in her dress. I’ve been at the opera.

Her own fear surprised her most, the dull thumping deep in her bowels that was associated with the instruction that she might now open her test booklet and begin. Or even later, being called on in Grand Rounds, Dr. Singh, if you would then explain to us why the numbness persists. Marina would have expected anger, confrontation. It wouldn’t matter that someone was singing, that everyone around them would hear her. I want you to tell me what happened to Anders! was what she had planned to say. What a thought. She had nothing to say to Dr. Swenson. She was waiting to hear what Dr. Swenson had to say to her. Dr. Singh, of course I remember, you blinded that child in Baltimore. The sweat under her arms came down her rib cage in an unimpeded line, and because of the way the dress was cut, fastened behind her neck and low across her back, it did not pool into a stain until it was nearly at her waist. Orfeo could not take it another minute, the badgering, the chilling doubt. Isn’t it proof enough that I’ve come to hell for you? he could have said. Couldn’t you trust my love and wait another twenty minutes while I navigate this narrow path? But no, it didn’t work that way. He had to see her. He had to reassure her of his love. He had to shut her up. He turned to his beloved and in doing so he killed her all over again, sending her down to that pit of endless sleep where the story had first begun.

With everything in her, Marina willed the singers to stop singing, the musicians to put down their instruments in recognition of the unbearable anxiety emanating from the third tier. Such is the stuff of dreams. It wasn’t enough that in this opera the dead were alive and then dead again due to the botched efforts of the protagonist, there were still more reversals of fortune and a very long dance segment to endure, but the ending did at last arrive. Marina and the two Bovenders applauded violently, all the repressed energy of waiting finally able to release itself into their slapping hands. “Brava!” Jackie called when the mezzo came forward on the stage.

“It was hardly as good as all that,” Dr. Swenson said behind them.

As if that sentence were their permission, they stood and turned, the three of them, Dr. Swenson’s chorus. “Probably not,” Barbara said, as if this were a conversation. “But it’s just so lovely to go to the opera.”

“Great seats,” Jackie said.

Marina, who was considerably taller in Mrs. Bovender’s shoes, neglected to take Dr. Swenson’s height into account and so looked directly over Dr. Swenson’s head when she turned. She saw another person in the box, a man in a suit who stayed beneath the eaves. Milton mouthed to her a silent hello.

Barbara put her arm around Marina’s shoulder and pulled her close. The gesture could have been seen as possessive or loving and yet Marina suspected it was really an attempt by the younger woman to remain standing. She could feel Barbara Bovender’s heartbeat as she pushed in hip to hip, rib to rib. A low current of trembling rumbled between them and she could not be sure which of them was the source. “Annick, you know my friend Dr. Singh,” Barbara said.

“Dr. Singh,” Dr. Swenson said, and offered her hand, neither confirming nor denying what she