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That's why she has a bottle of Serge Noire, a rough, balsamic scent that almost corrodes her skin, on her perfectly black lacquered dressing table every morning before work.

Charlie hates them so desperately – every time he comes to visit, he opens the wide windows of her house on Queen Anne Street and lets the cold wind take over the apartment.

The wind scatters the flat stacks of papers, lifts the edge of the light blue blanket, just barely clings the black mugs hanging on the thin hooks, and makes the plaid scarf hug the carved hanger.

Clark is not angry – on the contrary, she sits in a chair in the windiest place, as if defying nature itself, throws her leg over her and smokes menthol Lucky Strike, which is completely out of her style.

Lorraine is always well-groomed: styling, makeup, clean clothes-as is her apartment. One hundred squares of light parquet flooring and dark walls in the most blatant minimalist style-there is hardly any furniture except for the bare essentials.

And one more detail that does not fit into the dark gray interior of the apartment.

Behind a small snow-white partition lurked dry mahogany with carved gold "Clark & Co." letters; the piano's polished, once glossy surface had worn away in places, revealing the dark wood.

Charlie has never touched the instrument, though he no longer remembers how he knows its entire structure by heart, from the whirling board to the platter frame; and he often strikes himself on the knuckle with a tuning fork, trying to hear echoes of his past in the sound of the "A" note.

He doesn't know what he hates more: the bitter perfume or this damn instrument that reminds him of who he really is.

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