38.

The Evening She Misses

The deep Archive and Requiem City, Year 200 AGH (month 9)

“Lorin would count before the buyers took anything.”

Jo moved her finger down the clean page.

“Lorin would count before the buyers took anything.”

“That sounds likely,” the mind said. “Both times.”

She looked back at the first line. The words were there twice, in her own hand, the second version a little smaller where she had tried to fit it before the edge. She had been copying the last part of the fishery account from the loose leaves into the book. On the loose leaf Vessa had moved a tray into the shade. In the book she had not moved it at all.

“I've missed one.”

“I heard.”

“It isn't lost. It's here.”

She put a fingertip beside the sentence on the loose leaf, keeping her place while she reached for the pen. The nib made a dry scratch. She had not dipped it.

“Read it first,” the mind said.

She started again, got as far as the fuller tray, and found herself saying the line about the buyers.

Jo set down the pen.

The chamber had become cold in the way it did when she had been sitting too long. She could feel the edge of the stool through her skirt. Her toes had drawn together inside her boots without improving anything. She spread them and pressed both soles against the floor.

“I can finish this.”

“You can also copy it a third time.”

“It is one sentence.”

“Then it will still be one sentence at your next visit.”

She looked beyond the page. The turquoise was thin along a part of the lattice she had stopped expecting to brighten. There were accounts they had not begun, names in her list with only a few words beside them. She had come down intending to finish the clean copy and ask which one it wanted next. A few lines on a page were easy to leave. The listening afterward was harder.

“What will you have lost by then?”

“I don't know.”

“Neither do I.”

“You think I need to hear you make a mistake before I believe you would rather stay?”

“That isn't what I'm doing.”

It waited. She rubbed the side of her finger where the pen had rested.

“You spend yourself,” she said, “and I'm supposed to go upstairs and have a pleasant evening.”

“I was not aware that pleasant was required.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes.”

For a while there was only the sound beneath its voice, which did not stop when neither of them spoke.

“I can sleep,” Jo said.

“Yes.”

“And you can't come back with it all again.”

“No.”

She had wanted it to argue. There would have been something to answer then. She could feel the next refusal waiting in her mouth, useless now. Aboveground, a friend was keeping a place for her at supper. Jo had been answering that invitation with “next week” for most of the month.

Jo brought the loose leaf close enough to read without leaning. She drew a line through the second copy of the sentence, leaving the words legible, and wrote the stopping point beneath it. The loose leaf went into the book at that place. She let its upper edge show.

“Tomorrow after my duties,” she said. “The usual time.”

“Will you know where we are?”

She read the last checked line, then the words she had written to mark what came next.

“Yes.”

“Then go.”

She closed the ink, put the pen where it would not roll, and stood with a hand on the shelf. Her knees were stiff. The mind had something she could ask for even now; she did not ask.

On the stair, at the first turn, she remembered that she had not chosen the next account. She stopped with her hand against the stone. She could go down, ask only that, and be away again.

Someone was waiting for her aboveground. Jo went up.

*   *   *

Her friend had ordered before she arrived.

“Good,” Jo said, looking at the dish between their places. “I was going to say I didn't mind.”

“You said that last time.”

“Was it wrong?”

“You ate all of mine.”

Jo pulled out the chair. Her friend shifted a folded coat off the seat and put it across their own knees. For several moments Jo was concerned only with sitting somewhere that did not send cold through her clothes.

There were little onions among the potatoes. She took one, found it sweeter than she expected, and took another while her friend was telling her about a room they had gone to see. The room was large enough. The stair to it apparently had a turn which belonged to nobody's furniture.

“The woman kept saying the previous tenant had managed.”

“Had they left anything behind?”

“A table. I began to see why.”

Jo laughed. Her friend went on describing the table, which had a leg too short to keep still and a top too broad to get past the turn. Jo thought of the sentence she could make of that, a short one to set beside the account of a room someone else had wanted. Her hand went toward the pocket in which she carried her smaller notebook.

“Don't put my table in your book.”

“I wasn't going to put you in it.”

“It's my table I'm worried about. I haven't even decided whether I'm taking the room.”

Jo left the notebook where it was.

“Are you?”

“I wanted to tell you about the other one.”

“Tell me.”

The other room had a better stair and a worse view. Her friend thought Jo would choose it. Jo thought she would want to see them both, which was less useful than either of them had hoped. They disagreed about the view for a while. During the disagreement her friend took the last small onion from under Jo's spoon.

“I was having that.”

“You were considering the window.”

She took a potato instead. It broke against the side of her spoon, and she caught the loose piece before it fell onto her coat. Across the table her friend began the account of a window that did not open, which turned out not to belong to either room.

“How many rooms did you see?”

“Six. I'm telling you the good ones first.”

Jo laughed. Her friend took another spoonful and waited for her to finish.

*   *   *

At the next visit she found the loose leaf exactly where she had put it. The paper retained a slight bend from the book's edge. She smoothed it against the shelf.

The ferryman's gap was still in the earlier leaves. She passed it without offering a new guess.

“Where did we stop?” the mind asked.

Jo read the checked line and found the next sentence on the loose leaf. This time Vessa shifted the fuller tray into the shade and drew the empty one close to her knees. Jo copied the sentence, checked it against the leaf, and set the pen down.

“There.”

“Once?”

“Once.”

She turned to a clean page and waited to hear what it wanted to tell her.