The dress belongs to my employer. So does the mask, the invitation, and the name I am about to answer to. I am Serafina, twenty-seven, assistant to a woman whose diary I know better than my own, and tonight she has a migraine and a reputation to protect, and so the emerald silk is on me and the gondola is waiting.
The palazzo on the Grand Canal has candles in every window. I climb the wet steps in her shoes, half a size too small, and give her name at the door, and no one blinks. That is the frightening part. How easy it is.
Inside, the ballroom is a hundred faces I can't see. Feathers, gilt, the smell of beeswax and perfume. I keep to the wall and count the minutes until I can decently leave.
“Signorina.” The voice is at my shoulder. The man wears a plain black mask and a suit that costs more than my year, and I know from the photographs that this is Lorenzo, the host. “You have never come to my house before,” he says. “I would have remembered.”
He thinks he is speaking to her. He is, in a way. I lower my voice, borrow her way of tilting her head, and say that I don't attend parties where I'm not certain of the company.
He laughs, holds out his hand, and the orchestra begins something slow.
We dance. He is good at it, unshowy, and he asks questions that are not really about business at all. What I read. Whether I sleep well. What I would do with one evening that no one could ever trace back to me. Every answer I give is mine, not hers, and every one he keeps. The song ends. He does not let go of my hand. “Another,” he says, and the truth becomes a little more expensive with each bar.
