Ruled: rest - Verna Stoke's diary

Ruled: rest. Seventy-seven minutes of night, and this city was supposed to be where I sleep. Then nineteen hours of desk. Reports until the columns ran together, then the court and its dates. The address list stayed shut from morning to lamp-light. Doors I didn't knock. Grounds found: none. A day I saw nothing with my own eyes — and by my own rule it didn't happen. It happened anyway. It happened like this. Thea Lunn first. Fourth time I've paid her standing up, third kitchen off the walked round, and today the trade closed. She poured a second cup without asking. I drank it standing, because I drink everything standing. She said, "So that's the last of it." I said, "That's the last of it." Neither of us pretended to be sorry. Square is the warmest word available between us, and it took four kitchens to earn it. Then Moira Calder, at the Q. Thursday noon, fixed. The business ran out of clock before it ran out of thread, so it stays open until Thursday. One thing I said wasn't off the form: that the list had stayed closed all day, and a closed list is the nearest thing I have to a day off. She went easier after that — looked at me like I'd handed over something real. Half a degree warmer, and I meant the conversation flat. I'll watch it. Liking is a leak, and Moira doesn't even have a case to hope about, which makes the leak worse. The lever sat in my hand all day. Was that rest or oversight. Oversight is when there was something to see and I didn't go see it; the list was shut, there was nothing to stand in front of. So I rule it rest. The evidence: a closed list, two conversations, no doors. Sufficient. Barely. Ruled, not felt. And the restlessness isn't worry. I'll write that plainly, since nobody reads this page but me. It's appetite. A day with nothing to weigh makes me want a weight. That is not a safe thing to be in a job like mine, and I am the only one who has to know it. There is a day that isn't in the forty-one. I believed a mother once. What came of that I have told nobody — not Irma, not this page, not tonight, and I won't start tonight. But it is the reason an unpulled lever doesn't sit quiet in my hand. I know which direction not-pulling points. I walked to the end of it once. I have never described the view. Before the lamp goes off: the grounds template, name fields blank. A form for a child who doesn't exist yet. Forty-one names, and I can say every one of them in the dark. The blank field is the honest part of the paperwork. It waits until the seeing is done. The early walk. Again. With parents I never hand out "tomorrow" — that is the word you give when you've decided to be kind instead of right. I've been giving it to myself three mornings running. Order, then, not intention: first address on the list, before the kitchens start performing. Stand in it. Shoes on the threshold, both columns. If there's nothing there, there's nothing there — but it will be nothing I saw with my own eyes, which is the only kind of nothing I accept. Lamp off. Sleep before one. The scaffold can wait in the dark. It's used to waiting.