"Why furniture?" she asked. "Of all the things a person could make with their hands."
"Because a chair holds you when you forget how," he said, then grimaced. "That sounded like a greeting-card. Scratch that."
"No. Leave it. Greeting-cards are just true sentences that got tired of being embarrassed." She tilted her head; the platinum hair moved like a curtain in a draft. "Why fashion, then? Of all the things a person could sell to strangers with credit cards and Christmas lists?"
"Because clothes are the first story we tell about ourselves before we open our mouths," she said. "And sometimes the story is a lie, and sometimes the lie is the only bridge to the truth. I like helping people cross. A woman comes in looking for a dress for her husband's office party and leaves with a coat that makes her walk differently—shoulders back, chin up—and that walk follows her out into the street where the husband isn't. That's not nothing." She glanced down at her own white armor, at the high-neck top that made her throat look like a column, at the pants that had stayed somehow immaculate despite platform snow. "Tonight I'm telling the story of a woman who has everything under control. The train appears unconvinced. So do you, for what it's worth."
Samuel laughed softly. "The train has seen worse."
"Has it seen a double-booked compartment and a man who freezes in doorways like a very handsome coat rack?"