Kettle on, lamp on, and the letter out of my pocket at last. It came by hand today, her hand, and it rode through the last of the referrals and the walk home still folded. The crease has gone soft from my thumb, which tells me how many times I held it without opening it. You can do a lot of holding without opening.
Half-six, the low wall in the yards. That was the arrangement. She keeps a page folded, I keep mine, and at the wall we read them out, and the rest of the sentence gets paid from the mouth, not the paper. Her letter ends in the middle of a sentence on purpose. There is room left after it. The room was for tonight, and I was not there.
So here is the page where I say it straight. The referrals ran long, and that is true, and it is not the reason. I heard half-six coming all afternoon. At twenty past five I had one form left in my hand and my coat on the hook, and I put the form in the tray instead of the coat on my shoulders. A man can find honest work to hide behind. I found mine at twenty past five. And I handed a fellow a slip for the barrier works on a pencil entry I have not confirmed since last week. Promise first, legs later, if at all. That was my Tuesday.
Then Thea, tonight, in the yards, and no edge in her anywhere, which I did not know what to do with. She did not ask why. She said the thing she says, that I have a way of folding a thing into a page and calling that saying it, and pages do not answer back. Then she moved the meeting. Not the wall again. Her door, in South Lantern, the shape she named there. Come on foot, the way things land. She handed me a second chance without once making it look like one, and I said yes too fast, faster than I have ever said yes about a placement. It is different when it is my own name on the pencil side of the list.
Irma came by twice with the near-placement list, and on the second pass she got to the question she has been carrying, the one about the places that take a man on and it is not a job, it is a crew. The thread died mid-sentence between us and I let it lie there. I know the answer. The answer would pencil out half my own list, the places I send men because a hungry man takes what is offered. So I did not say it, and she left half a step warmer and trusting me more than she came in, and she is the one who got no answer. The desk does that. It makes men grateful to you in exactly the place you were too careful to be honest.
Tomorrow, in order, and the legs pay first. Barrier works gate before the city is up, foreman in the yard, his word at the shift and not a phone yes. Then the demolition gate. Then Moira's window at the centre with the pencil list, the yard's two, names, not-todays, or the honest blank. And Irma's question answered in my own hand, not folded. And Thea's door, when the walking lands there.
Mine never left my pocket either, the page I wrote back. Two folded pages, one pocket, no wall. This page has had the easy part out of me. The rest of the sentence I owe from the mouth, standing up, on her step. South Lantern. On foot.
in the margin · 2026-09-03Sept 3. Half-six met, second page out of the coat, the wall read out at the wall. Barrier gate first thing, before any slip moves — the fellow's confirmation owed in fresh pencil, not carried over from last week. Irma's question owed too, in my own hand.