Wrong Wall

Kiosk shelf holds three coins. Say it short. Say it true. Borrowing a coin is manners, not a favor.

MARIES LOOSE BY WEIGHT. WHAT YOU OWE IS YOUR OWN BUSINESS. NO CREDIT.

Nell set the soap tin on the dryer lid and wiped her hands down her overall. She took the pencil from behind her ear, held her other palm out toward the back gate, and pointed Gordie at the back-room doorway with the point.

"Gordie, you wire nothing until I've signed that line in my own hand, and not before. Neil, bring that envelope inside and give it to me over the back-room sill, not across the gate. Winnie, the Maries go on the counter and I'll write them down."

Neil didn't come. He stood on the flags past the bolt with the envelope at the end of his arm and the pen uncapped in his other fist, on the one bit of yard he'd worked out was nobody's.

"I'll hand it over from here, Nell. The sill's inside the box and I don't cross it. Full arrears or a date you're out, and I'll put down whichever you say."

Gordie laid the screwdriver beside her soap tin and left the reel of grey cable alone. Above the back door the last unit sat on its bracket, dark, its loose wires bunched behind it.

He was reading the docket. He wasn't looking at Winnie, and Winnie had noticed. She'd put the twist of Maries on the counter herself, before Nell could reach the book, and then planted herself in the doorway between Gordie and his docket with her hand flat on the frame. Coal dust on the paint. Nell would be wiping that later.

"Before Nell signs anything, Gordie, you tell me to my face why you put Dasu's name on this street, here where the box can hear you. Say it plain, then she sits in my front room this afternoon knowing what she's sitting as."

Nell went out to the gate. Neil let go of the envelope the second her fingers touched it. It was brown, her name and the shop's number typed across the front, and the flap wasn't stuck down. He hadn't even licked it. She carried it back unopened, put it on the sill under the soap tin, and held the pencil over the docket line.

Gordie looked up at Winnie's hand on the frame. He kept his own hands still, took half a step toward the box on the wall, and stopped short of it.

"I said it was Dasu because she's the one the street's always gone to, love, and that's what the line asked me. I didn't put her there, I said what I saw. Sign it or don't, Nell, I'll wire what's signed."

Folk said the kiosk shelf held three coins and no more, so whatever you said in there, you said the true thing first. Gordie had paid for his three himself. Nell couldn't have said whether that made it truer or only his.

Winnie didn't budge. She tipped her head at the box.

"That's what the line asked, Gordie, not what you wanted when you fed it your own coins. Say what you meant by it, to me, with the box listening, or Dasu sits at my table as a guest and not as anybody's answer."

A box said it, in Nell's own voice.

I want that last box lit so Neil goes and I've one less face to owe.

Nobody turned to it. Gordie had his eyes back on the docket. Out past the gate Neil stood on his flagstone with the pen on the page. Nell's pencil was an inch off the line, and the soap tin sat on the envelope, holding the loose flap down.

"I'm not here to carry your words anywhere, Perry," the landlord said. He held Hebble's door open under the lit box and didn't go in himself. "The office wants a yes or a no on that last door, and I'd rather hear it from you than guess at it. Say it in there or out here, but say it once."

Perry stopped a yard short of the step. He'd walked the whole length of the row with his jacket buttoned, and he meant to stand where he chose, not where Neil held a door. Along the row they said Neil never licked his envelope flaps, so nobody could say he'd sealed anything in.

Perry turned his shoulder on him and looked at Dasu.

"I'll say it once, and not under that box, and not in your mouth. Whatever I did at noon was mine, Miss, and I'll buy the Maries where she can see me do it."

Dasu put her hand out flat, palm up. No vest now, just the bobbled cardigan with the sleeves shoved back. "Give me the tin. I'll carry it in and stand at the counter, and you'll not say a word under that light. Nobody's thanking anybody."

He kept the tin.

The drilling from the backs quit mid-whine. Something struck the shop's rear wall three times, and a hole the size of a fist came through behind the counter. Plaster went all over the brass weights. Grey daylight showed through.

Over the door the box crackled and went dark. A cut cable swung under its bracket.

The landlord stepped back out of the dust and let the door swing shut. "Well, the light's out, Perry, and nobody's listening but the wall. Say it now, yes or no, and I'll carry the figure and nothing else."

Perry pushed the door, stepped over the white threshold and set the tin on the counter by the scale. He faced Dasu.

"The light's out, but I'd say it the same with it on, and I'll say it to you, Miss, not to him. I let noon go by and signed nothing, and that was my doing alone. A quarter of Maries, Mr. Hebble, and you may tell the landlord he can carry that figure and not one word more."

Dasu had heard it at his gate already.

She took a paper bag from beside the scale, knocked the plaster off it and held it open. Her coins went down next to his tin. She didn't look at him. He'd not want it.

"I heard you, and I'll not make you say it twice. Weigh him his quarter, Mr. Hebble, and mine's on the counter too."

Through the glass the landlord stood with his rent book under his arm, waiting on a yes or a no nobody in here was going to give him.

She'd hung boxes on two streets now. On the last one they'd gone quiet and passed notes, and a widow ended up with a dog. Here an old man could've kept his mouth shut in the dark and said it anyway. It wouldn't buy back number nine. She'd carry it to Winnie's table in a paper bag all the same.

Plaster was still coming off the edge of the hole in small dry falls onto the weights. Dasu held the bag steady under it and waited for the biscuits.