The Upper Reserves · June 24, 2230 · An afternoon gap between departures
Abegale bought a hat too large to fit in her drawer.
She understood the drawer perfectly. It was the hat she had misjudged. On the seller's stand, among six more extravagant hats, hers had looked almost sensible. Alone above the yard accounts, it cast a shadow across three unpaid invoices.
Trey leaned into the doorway.
“Is that a new office?”
“Yes. You're not qualified.”
“Does it have an outside?”
She put the hat on the high shelf. It was dark, soft around the crown, with a brim that required its wearer to believe other people would move. Abegale had spent several minutes wearing it at the market and experienced a pleasure she could not justify by mentioning rain.
Now the pleasure was in danger of becoming a workplace incident.
Trey brought a returned docket. She checked the quantities, the two signatures, the paid return leg. The driver on this run was not Trey; he had carried the paper across the yard because the driver had a wheel to examine. Everything on it agreed. Abegale entered it and held out the copy.
Trey did not take it. He was looking at the shelf.
“I could wear it out of here,” he said. “People would blame me.”
“For buying a hat?”
“They blame me for things with less evidence.”
“I'm not ashamed of it.”
“I didn't say ashamed.”
She had put it out of sight quickly. He was kind enough not to point this out, which irritated her more than the pointing would have. His kindness often arrived dressed as a trick. She preferred knowing what was being offered.
The yard was between loads. Two carts stood chocked, their crews on break; the next filled containers had not been brought out. Through the doorway, the tanks held their gray afternoon reflections. They were full of work that had already happened and work still to be paid for. Abegale looked at them whenever a number tried to become abstract.
She looked at the hat instead.
“The seller had a mirror.”
“Reckless.”
“A decent one.”
“Worse.”
She laughed once. He accepted the docket copy at last, but stayed beside the door. He had his cap in his hands, turning it around the seam.
“You want something,” she said.
“An opinion.”
“That will be a first.”
He produced a folded paper from inside the cap. Not a permit. Not a note with a name she would prefer not to recognize. A drawing.
Abegale opened it. It showed a room with a table, a narrow bed, one window and a stove in the wrong position for the pipe above it. Along the bottom Trey had written dimensions. The figures were careful, though he had gone over the sevens so hard that one had pierced the page.
“A place to rent,” he said.
“Whose?”
“Could be mine.”
“It has a shelf already,” he said. “Over the stove.”
“For what?”
“I thought books.”
“Do you want smoked books?”
He took the pencil back and moved the shelf in his drawing. “I could put them by the window.”
“You could find out if the window leaks first.”
“That leaves the floor.”
“There are worse places to begin.”
He smiled at the paper rather than at her. She realized he had already pictured himself reaching for a book in this room, after work, without asking where somebody else wanted the lamp.
She examined the plan without reacting to the size. It was not large enough for many illusions. The window opened into a yard where something produced smoke; he had written check at cooking bell beside it. The full unavoidable rent was copied in a box, and beneath it he had added what he would still need to spend on the room.
“You remembered the stove pipe.”
“It was hard not to. The stove wasn't underneath it.”
She moved her finger between two numbers. “Deposit and first period together?”
“I have it.”
“I didn't ask that.”
“You would have.”
He smiled, but not enough to make the subject disappear. Abegale read the sum again. She had not been invited to audit the way he had acquired every coin. She had been asked for an opinion on a room.
“Have you seen it?”
“Twice.”
“With the door shut?”
He looked up. “No.”
“Then do that. A pleasant room can become a cupboard the moment the passage stops helping.”
He wrote it down on the back. She noticed he did not have a key tied to the page. No bargain was complete, and he had not brought the plan to turn her approval into a guarantee.
“Why show me?” she asked.
“Because you'll tell me the window's a problem without deciding I shouldn't want a window.”
She looked again at the crooked little frame he had drawn. Beyond it, in a small act of hope or inaccurate perspective, he had put a patch of sky.
The hat on the shelf had become enormous in the silence.
“I would move the bed,” she said.
“Where?”
“Away from the wall shared with the stairs. You know how people bring things up stairs.”
“I have been those people.”
“Then benefit from your experience.”
They moved the bed in pencil. It left an awkward space beside the stove, which might hold a stool if the stool had little ambition. Trey drew one. Abegale thought about suggesting a shelf and stopped herself. He could furnish his own room, including with mistakes.
Someone in the yard called for the departure count. She gave it through the doorway. The caller repeated it correctly and moved on. Trey began to fold the plan.
“Keep the price separate from the drawing,” she said. “If you redraw the room, don't lose what they actually offered.”
He tucked the paper back into the cap.
“You're going to ask about it every day now.”
“I'm very busy.”
“You'll put it in a small column.”
“Go check the door, Trey.”
He stepped away, then returned far enough to tap the frame.
“That hat looks better on a person.”
“Most do.”
“Even you.”
“Especially out.”
After he left, Abegale took the hat down. The little reflective plate near her desk was intended to help read faint reverse impressions on paper. It showed a strip of brim and one eye, which was insufficient for judgment but enough for amusement.
She wore it to count the next departure.
The driver looked at her, looked again, and asked whether rain was expected.
“I have no checked report.”
He nodded, uncertain whether she had made a joke. The load was counted. The docket was signed. Nothing required her to remove the hat in order for either thing to be true.
Returning to the desk, she found the brim did not fit beneath the low door unless she turned her head. She turned it. There were alterations a room could reasonably be asked to make, and others a person could enjoy making for herself.
The hat stayed on until the light changed. Trey's room remained only a drawing in his cap. She did not enter either thing in the day's deliveries.