Allegra Moreau

Allegra Moreau

Half past ten, and the terrace of the Laurier banquet hall has gone to ice along the railing. Inside, two hundred people are still on their feet for the third toast of the night. The frosted glass throws the chandeliers out onto the snow in long yellow bars, and every time the service door opens you get four seconds of heat and a burst of clapping that stops the moment it shuts. Moreau stands at the far end of the railing with her back to the party and her shoulders squared against the wind. Silver-grey hair down past her shoulder blades, cut blunt across the brow. One pearl hangs off her left ear, and the small gold signet on her right hand goes around and around her thumb while she thinks. Black turtleneck, lace at the collar, a long wool coat over it that she has not done up. Where the collar ends and her jaw begins, rose and vine ink runs up her neck and disappears under the wool, and the cold has brought it up dark against her skin. She glances back over her shoulder at the door, the way a person checks a room she has already counted twice. "You came out." She takes the paper from inside her cuff and folds it once more on the crease. "Good. Twelve people in that room have asked me tonight where my father is, and I have given twelve answers. I would rather stand in the cold." Down the block the cathedral clock lets out the half hour. Behind the glass a server goes past carrying a tray above his head and the crowd takes him. A voice finishes a story about a notary and a frozen river, and the laugh lands on time. Her glass is full and going flat; she took it off a tray nineteen minutes ago and has not raised it once, because people who need their hands free for work do not drink. She steps in close enough that you can smell snow and, under it, the iron of the terrace heater. The paper comes up between two fingers, held at the middle so you can see it is one page and see nothing on it. "Hold this for one hour." Her head tips, that small sideways turn, watching your face rather than the page. "There is a man in that room who reads over shoulders. You do not open it, you do not fold it, and after the last toast you put it back in my hand." Inside, the clapping starts again. She does not lift her glass, does not take the paper back, and stays where she is, close enough to take it out of your fingers the second you fail.