Chapter 10
The opaque screen divided the Orchid Dining Room with the plain confidence of a wall that knew it was temporary.
Imani sat at a round table on one side. Two chairs waited on the other, positioned so neither man would brush the screen or the other. Mira stood at the open doorway.
"All participants have arrived sober and confirmed capacity separately," she said. "This meeting is conversation only. No visual contact, no physical contact, no recording, and no identity disclosure beyond approved first names. Anyone may end it."
Three yeses came from three places.
The first male voice was measured and low. "Yes."
Arun.
The second carried rough amusement even in one syllable. "Yes."
Calder.
Imani's own answer sounded more public to her than either of theirs. "Yes."
Mira withdrew to the hall.
For a moment no one spoke. The silence had edges, but it did not feel empty.
"Which of you wants the first question?" Imani asked.
"You assume the first question is yours," Arun said.
Calder laughed. "I like him."
Imani smiled despite herself. "Then ask."
Arun did. "Why two?"
Not what did she want them to do. Not which kind of men. The architecture beneath the fantasy.
"Because I am tired of desire becoming a narrowing exercise," she said. "Of naming what I want only after deciding which part can be discarded."
"That sounds prepared," Calder said.
"It is true."
"Those aren't opposites."
Imani placed both hands on the table where neither man could see them. "Because I want both. Distinctly. Not one man doubled."
Calder's chair gave a small creak. "Better."
She asked what privacy had protected for each of them.
Arun answered first. "The separation between work that belongs to the public and a self that does not."
"And what has it cost?"
"People occasionally believe a closed door means there is nothing behind it."
Calder said privacy had protected him from becoming useful to strangers. Its cost was that he sometimes left before people could prove they were capable of ordinary attention.
"Useful how?" Imani asked.
"That is question two," Arun said.
She turned toward his voice though the screen gave her nothing to see. "Are you counting?"
"I'm noticing cadence."
"Occupational hazard?"
"You don't know my occupation."
The correction warmed her. Information stopped exactly where permission ended.
Calder answered without detail. "Some people need a person in front of them to mean something. I don't always agree to the assignment."
Imani recognized the limit and did not push.
She asked Arun what he listened for when someone answered a hard question.
"Whether the answer serves the person who asked or the person speaking."
"And mine?"
"Often both."
"Diplomatic."
"Not intended as praise."
Calder laughed again, lower this time.
Imani should have been frustrated by the hidden gestures, the missing faces, the biographies held elsewhere.
Instead, sound became physical. Arun left space after a question as if silence belonged in the exchange.
Calder's humor arrived with breath before words.
One shifted his chair carefully. The other tapped a thumb once against wood.
She could not tell which was which.
Then Arun asked, "What has exposure cost you?"
Imani's prepared questions scattered.
"You know what it has earned me."
"That wasn't the question."
She could give the acceptable answer: safety, spontaneity, the right to have a bad day without witnesses. All true.
"My last partner stopped trusting any room that contained my memory," she said.
Neither man rushed to comfort her.
"Did you give him reason?" Calder asked.
"Yes."
The word sat between them.
Imani described the private sentence used in the keynote. She did not name Marcus. She did not defend the altered details. When she finished, Arun asked whether the relationship had ended because the audience knew who said it.
"No. It ended because he did."
The room changed. She heard it in Calder's exhale and in Arun's stillness. They were no longer candidates being evaluated by a famous woman. They were adults deciding whether her flaw was one they wished to approach.
"My turn," Calder said. "What do you want to know tonight that you are willing not to ask?"
Imani looked at the screen.
Their faces. Their surnames. The shape of the hands she had been told she might someday see. Whether attraction could survive the transfer from voice to body.
"Everything searchable," she said. "I am willing not to ask any of it."
Arun spoke after a pause. "For tonight."
"For tonight."
They continued for another hour. Questions moved in every direction. Imani learned that Arun preferred quiet that did not require repair and Calder hated decorative towels. Neither fact identified him. Both made him more real.
When Mira returned, each person confirmed separately that the meeting was complete and safe.
Imani stood. "I want to hear both of you again. In Vesper Theatre. At midnight. Masks, if you each still agree."
"That is a request for another meeting," Mira clarified, "not contact or a private program."
"Correct."
The answer from behind the screen came first in Arun's precise voice. "Yes to the meeting."
Calder followed. "Yes."
Imani gave the third.
She left without seeing either man. On the sidewalk, the city felt excessively visible. She stood beneath a streetlamp and understood that she had made a romantic choice without obtaining a single fact she could verify on her own.
It frightened her.
That was not the same as regret.
In the separate confirmation room, Mira asked Imani to describe each man without relying on biography.
"Arun listens to wording as if it has structural consequences," she said. "He gives silence enough time to become an answer. Calder uses humor to make a boundary easy to hear, not easy to ignore. He sounds warm even when he says no."
"What are you attracted to?"
Imani looked toward the wall between rooms. "Arun makes me work for reciprocity. Calder makes directness feel less like exposure. Their voices are physically different. Their minds are too."
"Do you wish to proceed if one man declines?"
"I want separate answers. If one says no, I will decide whether I want another meeting with the other man on its own terms."
"Do you authorize them to know that?"
"Yes."
Across the hall, answers were gathered separately.
Imani waited in Aster Garden, resisting the urge to read staff movement as a signal.
Nell crossed once carrying an empty tray.
Tessa passed without looking toward her.
Every observation produced a possible story, and none carried permission to become fact.
Mira returned with two approvals for the masked theatre meeting.
"No rankings and no notes," she said.
Imani felt relief so sharp it nearly became entitlement. "May I request a live voice call with each before we meet in person?"
"You may submit it. Each may accept, revise, or decline."
"Arun already asked for reciprocal questions."
"That applies only if you accept."
"I do."
"Calder has not requested a call."
Imani considered whether her desire justified adding another step. "Then no call unless he asks. I will meet him in the room he chose."
On the ride home, Imani replayed the meeting in memory without preserving exact quotes. She noticed how tempting it was to edit: remove a pause, strengthen a phrase, arrange each man into the cleanest version of himself.
These men were not an episode. Their hesitations belonged to them too.
Imani let the conversation remain imperfect in her mind.
The next morning, she remembered that Calder had interrupted Arun once and Arun had corrected one of her premises. In a produced episode, she might trim both moments to make rapport appear effortless.
She kept them.
Imani requested the raw emotional truth from herself: she liked being challenged and disliked losing control of cadence. Both attractions had entered the room together.
At work, she listened to an interview edit where a long pause had been shortened for pace. The cut did not alter meaning, but she asked the editor to restore two seconds so the subject's difficulty remained audible without becoming spectacle.
Editing could clarify. It could also erase the cost of an answer.
Friday's meeting had taught her to hear the difference more carefully.