“My famous mistake,” Farrell said to Ben and Sia that evening. “Stirring up the natives. He’s already talking about messing with the menu, trying to sneak some real cooking in among the Thumper Thighs before Disney sues the whole wretched outfit right into Bankruptcyland. No more omelettes for Mr. McIntire.”

He had been tuning the lute to play for them, and now he began on a Holborne galliard; but Sia’s silence made him fumble the first measures and stop. When he turned to look at her, she said, “But you might like that. To work for a man who is still discontent, who cannot quite resign himself to garbage. What’s better, if you have to work for someone?”

“Nope,” Farrell said. “Not me. When I’m a fry cook, I’m a fry cook, and when I’m a chef, that’s another thing altogether. I don’t mind giving, but I like to know exactly what I’m expected to give. Otherwise it gets confusing, and I have to think about it, and it troubles the music.”

Sia stood up with a movement so decisive that it wiped out all memory of her ever having been sitting. Her voice remained low and amused, but Farrell knew after a week that Sia only moved quickly when she was angry. “Cockteaser,” she said. She took herself out of the room then, and Farrell more than half expected to see the lamps, the rugs, and the stereo go bobbing after her, the piano spinning slowly in the backwash. The strings of his lute were all out of tune again.

Farrell sat with the lute in his lap, wondering if there could conceivably be a Greek word that sounded like the one he had heard. He was going to ask Ben; but then he looked across the room at shaking shoulders inadequately concealed behind an oversized art book and, instead, he retuned the lute once more and launched into Lachrimae Antiquae. His attack was a bit harsh in the opening bars, but after that it was all right. Sia’s living room was very good for pavanes.