[His hands slow and pause. His face seems to go momentarily blank, hollowed out. Then, his brain kicks back into gear as he realizes she just recited a poem without any bit of stuttering at all and he looks up at her in surprise.]

You just... You just did that from memory?

[Or she made it up, which is even more impressive, but either way, not actually the thing he's surprised over. Not the main thing anyway. There might be a few things here, like the words themselves.

A whole lot more like-- A faint nervous laugh escapes and he turns his gaze back down to finish up.]

Yeah, I guess it's... something like that. I'm not me for the clients. I'm whoever they want me to be. Whatever they want. And I do my best to match that.

[Not just for the clients, that nasty voice in his head sneers.]

It's never a long-term thing, usually just an evening, maybe two, so it's not actually that hard to keep up. Usually.