Instead, he was sitting on the floor, surrounded by reels of tape. His silence project. He played her a recording from the night before—her breathing, the rustle of sheets, the sigh she made when she turned over. It was intimate and invasive. "This is the real you," he said. "The you when no one is watching. I want that one. Not the one who goes to coffee with her past."

"That's not love. That's surveillance."

Claire stopped. The question was a door slamming. "Before I met you," she said. "One time. It meant nothing."

That night, walking home, he asked, "Did you sleep with him?"

December. The election was over. The world was somehow louder and more hollow. Claire went to a gallery in Toronto. Daniel stayed in Montreal and finished his silence project: sixty minutes of nothing, released on vinyl. It sold seventeen copies.

Their courtship was not a montage. It was the removal of armor, piece by rusted piece. Claire had left a husband in Berlin, a man who had loved her like a collector loves a rare stamp—carefully, behind glass. Daniel had never been left; he had simply evaporated from his last relationship, leaving no trace, which he considered polite.

"You should go," Daniel said. And she did.

He looked up, and for the first time, she saw not a man but a frightened animal. "I don't know the difference," he said.