Washington, D.C. · June 24, 2230 · Afternoon · A parallel street story
Hettie Moss arrived at the singing room with an excellent reason not to enter it.
There were four steps at the front. The rear door opened inward against a stack of empty oil boxes. The chairs were stools. A jug stood on a high shelf beside a cup nobody on a stool could reach without getting up.
Her report had said all of this. The report was correct.
Inside, three people sat waiting to sing. One was the leader, one kept the room, and the third was a man who had not read the report because the copy at his lodging house had been used to catch paste.
“You've halved us,” said the leader.
“Then there were six.”
“Usually eight.”
Hettie put her notebook away. Numbers rarely became friendlier when corrected twice.
The leader's name was Elda. She had a fine low singing voice and no money for a ramp. The room belonged to her cousin, who lent it between packing jobs. They practiced ordinary songs people could join without buying a score. Some came for the singing. Some came because, for an hour, other people would notice whether they were there.
Hettie had not called the group bad. She had called the room unsuitable for anybody needing a step-free entrance, a backrest, or a reliably reachable drink. She had printed the time she checked and the name of the person who declined to discuss moving the boxes.
That person was Elda's cousin. He stood up from his stool.
“I said I couldn't discuss it then. The carrier was waiting.”
“You asked me to return another day.”
“Because the carrier was waiting.”
“And people needed to know before coming today.”
Every sentence fit beside the others. They remained unpleasant company.
The third singer, a man named Peth, asked whether they were going to begin. He had walked far enough that he did not intend to spend the rest of the afternoon on the room's biography.
Elda started a song. Hettie stood near the door. She had planned to inspect whether anything had changed, not join. After the first verse Peth tapped the empty stool beside him.
“Do you know the second?”
“Yes.”
“Then contribute it.”
She sat. Her singing was worse than her reports. She could hold the tune until someone beside her found a more interesting one. Peth made the effort to remain steady, which struck her as a courtesy she had not been offered in many public meetings.
Halfway through, a woman appeared beyond the open door. She carried a folding walking stick and had stopped at the bottom step. Elda put down the song sheet.
“Rona. We missed you.”
“I read the report. I thought perhaps I'd hear from here.”
They were singing toward the back wall. Outside, Rona had heard the cousin shifting boxes and a delivery bell. Peth offered to help her up the steps. She thanked him and declined.
Hettie was relieved that nobody argued with the refusal. Then Elda asked her whether the report had any suggestion other than staying home.
“It tells you the conditions.”
“It told Rona what she already knew. She came here last week.”
Rona folded the stick against herself. “I wanted the others to know. I just wanted them somewhere else.”
Hettie had helped force repairs at larger halls by making the absent audience visible. This group could not lose enough custom to buy a carpenter. She had known that before publishing. Knowing it had not supplied a different entrance.
Elda's cousin went to the back boxes. Some were empty. Others contained jars that would have to move onto the floor if he cleared the door. The back landing still had a broken drop beyond it; opening the door would not make the route step-free. Hettie stopped him before the jars acquired a new hazard.
“Not that way.”
“Then where?”
Across the lane was a shallow covered recess beside a shuttered repair stall. Its paving was level with the street. It was not public seating, and the repairer was still inside counting parts. Elda knew him well enough to ask. Hettie went with her, then stayed quiet while she asked.
The repairer would lend the recess until his next customer came to collect a wheel. They could not block the shutter or lean a chair against it. He had one backed chair and needed it himself after standing through the morning.
There were now five singers, counting Hettie. One chair would not accommodate every person who might need a backrest. They did not have every person yet. Rona asked whether there was room for her own folding seat if a neighbor fetched it. There was.
The cousin carried out the jug and put it on a low crate. Peth stayed with Rona while Elda went for the seat. Hettie moved the stools, two at a time. They were lighter than the argument had made them sound.
The recess had problems. A cart drowned the end of one verse. The awning smelled of oil. Anyone needing the privy still faced the singing room's entrance and its stairs. Hettie could not recommend the whole afternoon there as accessible merely because the first obstacle had changed address.
Rona knew where a nearby step-free privy stood. She had used it that morning. The attendant, asked directly, agreed the singers could use it during the same opening hours as everyone else. Nobody called that a permanent arrangement.
They sang two songs. A passerby stood listening, then joined the last chorus without introducing himself. When the wheel customer arrived, they moved the stools clear. He collected his wheel. The repairer sat in his backed chair and, after a while, supplied the missing words of a verse everybody else remembered differently.
Hettie laughed in the wrong place and lost the tune again.
It had cost the cousin part of his packing time, Elda a walk, the repairer space and patience. Rona had come prepared to listen from the street and was now arguing about the song's third verse. The group had not regained its absent members. The room had not acquired a ramp.
Afterward Elda asked Hettie to remove the bad mark.
“No,” Hettie said. “The steps haven't moved.”
“Then write what did.”
She wrote a second, dated entry: today's practice moved to a borrowed level recess; two songs completed; water reachable; nearby privy checked open; future use unconfirmed. She kept the original conditions visible. Below both entries she put the group's next meeting location as NOT YET AGREED, with Elda's chosen contact point.
Elda read it and remained unhappy about the first report. Hettie remained unwilling to conceal the steps. They could now disagree about that while carrying the last stool together.
Peth waited beside the shutter. “Same terrible alto next time?” he asked Hettie.
“Depends on the entrance.”
“The tune is the difficult entrance for you.”
She told him where to send a location once they had one. It was not an endorsement, a booking or a guarantee of attendance. She wrote the contact beneath his name, on the page where she normally counted seats. Peth asked whether she could also find the second verse before then.