"It is my name."
She pulled back an inch and stared at him. Up close, her eyes had flecks of green in the brown.
"What?"
"James," he said, still quietly. "It's actually my name. James Fitzhugh."
For a second she just looked at him. Then something happened to her face that he would also remember for a long time afterward, a kind of crumpling and lifting at the same time, as though she had been braced for a blow that did not land and her body did not know what to do with the leftover force. She laughed, one short breath of a laugh, and pressed the back of her red-gloved hand against her mouth.
"Of course it is," she said. "Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be."
"James," Iris said, a little sharply, the way a woman speaks to a man who has been whispering with someone else at a party. "Who's your friend?"
The woman in red turned to her, and the smile she put on now was a different smile, wider and simpler, the kind you give to a child or a nervous dog. "Hi there," she said. "I'm the girl in red. Remember me? I help you get home."
"Oh, yes," Iris said vaguely, and then, with more confidence, as if she had found the right file in a drawer, "Yes. The girl who helps. She's very good. She plays the piano." She leaned toward James and said in a loud, confiding voice, "She's not as good as she thinks she is, but she's very good."
"Thank you, Bird," said the woman in red.
"I'm only telling him."