and audio recording are strictly prohibited, and failure to abide by this rule will result in your immediate removal.
It is not mandatory that you participate in the performance for the full five minutes and may leave at any time.
If you chose to remain inside for the duration of your segment, a chime will sound when your time is up.
When you hear the chime, please leave the room swiftly and quietly through the exit.
Thank you for your cooperation.
I broke one of the rules. Before I went in, I opened the voice memo app on my phone and pushed record. I wasn’t trying to be subversive, I just didn’t think I would remember what I said if I didn’t record it, and I wanted to remember.
The daylong wait had felt interminable, but when the guard finally nodded for me to go in, my turn seemed to come too soon. I hesitated at the door. Panicked about what I was going to say. Forgot to breathe. Wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans. Wished I’d brought a flask. Had the urge to bolt.
But I didn’t bolt.
I took one step forward.
And another.
And there she was.
Her eyes were closed when I approached the table. Eli, the Times writer who hadn’t missed a day, had prepared me for this. “Her eyes will be closed when you walk in. She keeps them closed until you take her hands and she gets a feel for you.”
I felt glad for it. It gave me a chance to take her in without seeing the scorn and disappointment I was expecting.
She was wearing a ruffly, dusty rose–colored satin gown, the top half of it a dainty camisole. Her arms were thin and pale like the branches of an aspen in winter, her collarbones prominent and graceful underneath the shoulder ties of the dress. She wore no makeup, no jewelry, no shoes, and her hair was pulled back into a knot, though the layers in front hung like wispy fringe around her face. She looked radiantly tired, the way someone carrying burdens is tired. And she was even lovelier than I remembered.
The inside of the house surprised me. When I think of museums, I think architectural austerity, but that’s not October’s style. The chairs were covered in supple white leather, so plush it looked like whipped cream. The table was polished redwood, and I tried not to attach any meaning to that. There was a thick, shaggy carpet underneath the table, and the subtle tint in the glass walls cast a delicate, rubicund glow over everything.
I sat down slowly, moved to the edge of the seat, and slid my palms underneath October’s hands. I was nervous, though my composure remained intact as I felt her gently grip my fingers.
In a matter of seconds, I heard her breath catch somewhere in her chest. A tiny, cognizant gasp.
She recognized me.
My heart pounded against my chest like a fist against a door while I waited for her to open her eyes, but she kept them closed for so long I worried she wasn’t going to open them at all.
“October,” I said. “Look at me.”
Her face was a blank canvas as she raised her chin and adjusted her posture. Then she took another deep breath and braced herself.
When she finally opened her eyes, a noise escaped my throat. A laugh or a cry, it was hard to tell. I began to sob, but I was smiling too. A stupid, blubbering grin. I couldn’t help it. I was happy to see her.
I pulled myself together as best I could and said, “Hey.”
Her face stayed as neutral as Switzerland, but her eyes were wide and shiny, and a few thick, elegant tears dripped down her cheeks.
I searched her face, trying to figure out if those tears were hers, or echoes of mine, but she was too focused, too committed to her role to reveal her internal world to me. She wasn’t there to give, only to take, to hold, and to release. I felt warmth in her neutrality though. Not the rejection I had expected and deserved, but tenderness, and the wide-open heart I’d always known her to have.
I leaned forward and tried to peer deeper into her. She and I have uncannily similar eyes. The same gray circles around the same redwood-brown irises. Maybe that was part of our connection, I thought. We saw ourselves in each other. Two sides of the same moon. The light and the dark.
I watched her take me in and wondered how