An increasingly irritable piece at the back of Ida’s mind continued to wail about how this was a waste of time. How her destiny awaited on the other side of this wall somewhere, the benevolent ballerina that Ida was determined to meet. If only she can find her, and think of what to say! Probably not in that order. Oh but how could she get her brain to think properly with Mister Greengrass so intent on conversation?

This conversation, moreover, took a dangerous turn. Shoving aside impulses usually came easily to Ida, disciplined as she was when there was a problem to solve. But for the life of her, she couldn’t bring him or their conversation into complete focus. Whispers frayed the edges of her brain about the dancer she must locate. What a disconcerting way her mind was behaving. It made her head tick to the side, like she was trying to shake water out of her ear.

The social commentary broke through enough to earn a faint smile, though. Ida did not believe she was being self-deprecating, but he probably didn’t know her brother is a contracts and employment lawyer. “Oh.” Perhaps this made things a little better, if he was just responding to what he thought she wanted. However, the concept of unwarranted praise still made her nervous.

“But you don’t work to meet pretty poltergeists or ghosts, you work to be paid,” she rationalized, tone kept even. “I don’t believe you ought to do something so much like work when there’s no form of payment for it, even if it looks nice. Which– well, everything looks nice compared to a poltergeist,” she added haplessly, because now he was giving her a look that seemed to ask for something. For what? she fretted, taking a weary puff of her cigarette again. “And I’m not saying that to fish for compliments. Aristotle said we work to have leisure, on which happiness depends. I genuinely believe that to work during one’s leisure time deprives one of happiness.” So she was bound to make him unhappy.

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