Washington, D.C. · June 24, 2230 · Morning into midday · A parallel street story
June Bug Bell could make a queue sound like company.
“Good people gathering at the east gate,” she told the little relay horn. “Rellin's griddle is warm, the first cakes are turning, and there is room in the morning for you.”
There had been room when she checked. Six people, two griddles, a basket of meal beneath the table. She had counted them herself before first bell. Rellin had handed her breakfast in a cloth and said that business would be grateful for a mention.
Business was grateful. By the time she arrived to return the cloth, it occupied most of the lane.
A woman near the rear was eating the corner of yesterday's loaf. Ahead of her, a boy held an empty bowl against his chest. Rellin's second griddle stood upright against the wall. Its supporting leg lay beside it, looking recently relieved of responsibility.
June Bug counted nineteen people and stopped counting when the woman with the loaf recognized her.
“There's room in the morning,” the woman said.
“There was.”
“Good. Where did you put it?”
Her name was Kessa. She had half a bell before the stitching room opened and enough money for two cakes. The loaf was meant for later. June Bug could hear, with unusual clarity, every comfortable word of her own announcement.
Rellin came around the counter carrying a pan he could not find a place to put. June Bug took it. This was the advantage of a crowd: there were many people to ask for help. It was also the disadvantage.
“The leg split after your check,” he said. “Nobody lied.”
“I didn't say anyone did.”
“People are making the noise they make when somebody did.”
He was not withholding cooked food to build excitement. The working griddle was full. His niece turned the cakes as quickly as their undersides allowed, while the front of the line asked whether theirs might be done sooner for reasons the grain could not appreciate.
June Bug had a noon relay turn. She could update the forecast then. Kessa showed her the loaf again.
“Very useful to my afternoon.”
The receiver in Rellin's stall could listen, not send. June Bug knew a little copying desk two corners away that took short messages to a neighborhood line. It charged by the strip. The morning sponsor payment had been breakfast, lamp oil and a spool of paper. None of these was the coin the copy keeper wanted.
Rellin looked toward the broken leg. “I could give you the money after we sell these.”
“That is when the people who need the message will be here.”
He put the pan down on his own chair and went under the counter for the cash tin. She stopped him. If his morning suddenly required a repair and an announcement, he would discover those costs inside the price of a cake. She had already eaten the consideration.
She paid from her own purse. It was not much money. It was exactly the money she had set aside for a new microphone cloth, and she disliked losing it enough to know that the decision was real.
At the copying desk she wrote a bright opening, crossed it out and wrote the queue count. The keeper read it back.
“East gate. Rellin's. Nineteen waiting when checked. One griddle working. Your earlier mention was paid for in supplies.”
“Two griddles were working when I looked.”
“Shall I put that?”
“Yes.”
“Another line.”
She paid for another line.
Then she saw that the message contained no instruction a person could use without returning to the same uncertain line. She could not know which other stall had food. She could tell them when she had checked, and that nobody had reserved their breakfast merely by hearing her voice.
The keeper offered to read the correction. June Bug shook her head. Her morning voice was recognizable. People had followed it to the cakes. They could hear it do the walk back.
She spoke into the desk's scuffed horn at her usual volume. The keeper winced and moved the horn farther away. Through a receiver at the back of the room came her own voice, a little thin but no longer small.
When she returned, eleven people remained. Six had left after the message. Two had been served. Kessa still stood there.
“I thought you had work.”
“I do. My sister's boy still needs breakfast.” She nodded at the child with the bowl. “I'm deciding which late thing I can afford.”
June Bug offered to take her place and bring the cakes. Kessa studied her as if this were a second forecast with attractive weather.
“To the stitching room. Not a general account of the stitching room. The red door past the pump seller. Two cakes, no syrup. He drops the bowl.”
“I don't drop it,” said the boy.
“Not before breakfast. You have standards.”
Kessa left him with June Bug, after asking him whether that was all right. His name was Tam. He had no interest in the relay. He wanted to know whether she was the woman who called rain “a little street polish.”
“Sometimes.”
“It went in our stove.”
They waited. He asked whether she would stop calling it polish. She said she could manage that much.
At the counter, Rellin gave Tam the cakes and began filling a third plate for June Bug. She put a hand over it.
“I had mine.”
“For helping.”
“Then help the next person.”
His face tightened. “I'm paying for meal, not performing goodness. The next person can buy one.”
She had wanted him to take the sentence well. On reflection, it was a sentence that spent his stock. She withdrew her hand and apologized. He wrapped the third cake for his niece, who had been turning everybody else's breakfast without eating her own.
June Bug carried Tam's bowl while he carried the old breakfast cloth. At the red door, Kessa received both cakes and nephew. She had lost a quarter bell's pay. The stitching room had not mistaken a useful correction for punctuality.
“Put that in your happy bit,” she said.
June Bug didn't. At noon she gave the checked queue, the failed leg, her paid mention and the time of the correction. She said one listener had arrived late for work after following it. She did not give Kessa's name or turn the boy into a loyal audience.
Rellin later sent word that he would still supply the program next market morning, but not the extra paper used to explain his contribution.
June Bug wrote the price of paper in her little book. Under it she put microphone cloth, with no money beside either.
For the first time that day, her bright sentence took some finding. She found one eventually: the griddle's niece had eaten.
She left it off the air. The niece had not supplied the program.