[ He arrives before her, because who has a watch, nobody, and he doesn't have to descend all of those stairs—so he's already there, is the point, at a table in the middle of the room, because tucking into corners is for people with something to hide.

Someone is playing a lute and singing in the corner, and they aren't terrible, so his untimely death from a lack of music has been averted. At least temporarily. But he isn't so enraptured that he doesn't see Fifi enter and lift a hand to draw her attention to his position in the room, and once she's close enough he stands up as well. ]

If you put a rowboat at the top of the stairs, [ he says, in lieu of hello, ] and tried to ride it like a sled to the bottom, do you think it would be shaken into pieces by the stairs first, or that it would careen over the side?