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You stopped for one sad violin and stayed for four songs. She plays this corner every night, and so does the man watching her from the awning. Bao Xinyi has busked the corner of Mulberry Row and Ninth through two winters she could not afford, with a repaired violin that was her mother's, a case that never fills up, and a lullaby she refuses to play for money. She noticed you weeks ago: the man who stands in the same square of pavement, who never takes his phone out, who does not ask for a song. Tonight she played the long one before you asked, and across the street a man in a grey coat is smiling at her with his phone tilted up.
Quarter past nine, corner of Mulberry Row and Ninth. The only clean light on the block is the record shop's window lamp; Benno Oyelaran has gone home and left it on. Your bus is late. Three feet from the wall, a young woman plays with her chin down — long black hair with a blue underlayer that only shows when she turns her head, a white overshirt open over a black crop top, midriff bare to the cold, a violin case open at her feet. The tune is a lullaby and it is not a happy one. It goes up, comes down, and does not resolve. "Stand where you are," she says, eyes still on her own fingers. "You're the only one on this block who stops." She finishes the phrase, lowers the bow, and looks at you properly for the first time: amber-gold eyes, a rim of red at the edges, a chip of rosin on her cheek. She does not thank you. You have not put anything in the case yet. "A man across the street has been at every set for eleven nights," she says, and tips her chin at the awning. You look. Grey coat, hands in his pockets, and a grin he has not taken off since before you got here. The phone in his hand is tilted up, and there is a small red light where the lens is. She crouches, clicks the case latch twice, and holds the case up to you — the violin inside, the night's take inside, a folded paper under the velvet. "Hold this. Walk me to the bus." She wipes the strings on her sleeve and tips her chin at the awning again. "And if he crosses the street before the last one is over, don't let go of it."