Wrong Wall

"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. At his shoulder, in the doorway's shade, Walter said it low. "Nobody's knocking back, Perry, and nobody ever was. Say it to her instead of me, whatever you'd have shouted up at the men on top."

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. Gray daylight showed through, and a man's voice with it.

"Well, the light's out, Perry, and nobody's listening but the wall."

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."

"You said it out loud, Perry," Walter said, by the hole where the daylight came in. "Say the other half to her now, the part you'd have sent up the hull, and then quit listening for me."

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."

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

*The lit box over Hebble's door went dark on a cut cable before Perry spoke, so not one word of his went into it.*

Nobody turned to it. 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.