Tessa

Tessa made costumes when there was work and helped at a theatre when there was not, and she was the first person in Zarina’s life to ask her a question without already knowing the answer.

They met in a room behind a curtain above a side street, where the violinist was not very good and Zarina had been standing by the door long enough to be noticed. Tessa said so. She did not ask where Zarina had come from or whose household she belonged to. She said the musicians were usually better than this, and that most people were unsure the first time, and then, because somebody had called her name from across the room, that they were sitting at that table over there and Zarina could come over if she wanted, and if she did not like it she could leave. There was no insistence in any of it. When Zarina gave her a name that was not hers, nothing at all happened in Tessa’s face.

She is not much interested in being a friend in the way courts understand the word. She is late, or absent, or asleep somewhere else. She turns up carrying a bundle of fabric and drops it on a chair without taking her coat off. She picks up somebody’s abandoned cup, smells it, and puts it back down. She complains about a theatre that has not paid her in two weeks and then does not go in the next day, and when Zarina asks why she does not simply stop working there, says that then she would not get paid at all — an answer that makes complete sense and none. She repairs the same old coat with a crooked stitch rather than replace it, holds the sleeve up, and says it is good enough in the dark.

What she gave Zarina without ever knowing it was the experience of being asked what she wanted. Outside a theatre whose performance had been cancelled, with Oren wanting a drink and Leni wanting food, Tessa turned and asked Zarina what she wanted to do, and waited for an answer, and did not supply one. Zarina thought about it for the rest of the night. It was the smallest decision anybody had ever left entirely to her.

Asked directly whether she belonged to the Velvet Veil, she said sort of, and then no, not properly — she goes to their places, she knows people, she works for them sometimes, costumes and sets and whatever else is needed. Pressed on what they actually do, she said it depends who you ask, and that some people take it more seriously, and finally, sounding tired of the question, that she just liked the people. That answer reassured Zarina more than any other could have, because it was her own.

She never asked who Zarina’s family were, not even when Zarina came back after twelve nights away and said they had found out. She asked whether Zarina needed to stop coming, and was told no, and said all right, and went back to the hem in her lap.