Page 36 of Soft Erasure

I didn’t press the heart. I didn’t press thanks. I didn’t type back.

I sat at the breakfast bar with the phone face-up and the hum still on my mouth. I closed my mouth. The hum stayed inside it. It would come at one-fifty-two tomorrow. The building had already written the time on a sheet and read it back to me once.

The band warmed.

WELLNESS (07:13): Wednesday 10:00 DEEP confirmed. “You asked.” Adherence: 78.

The same line as the day before. Word for word. The system had a choice between remembering I had said no and sending it anyway, and it made the one it always made.

You asked.

I had not asked.

I picked up the phone and did the thing the system didn’t expect, because the system rewarded silence, and the yes, and the dose taken without a word. I typed in capitals.

AMBER: I DID NOT ASK. NO DEEP.

I sent it. The band warmed. It didn’t read the letters. It read what the letters cost me, and it charged it back.

Adherence: 78 → 73.

Five points. The capitals and the no had been read as one event. It didn’t charge the no by itself. It charged the no said loudly. The difference was the only kind thing the rate card ever did for me, and I added it to the inventory anyway.

A reply didn’t come from WELLNESS. It came from M. CALDREN.

M. CALDREN (07:16): Heard. Wednesday holds at your discretion. Eat.

He had not pushed. He had not threatened. He had heard. He had said eat.

He was teaching me again that he gave when I refused, that the refusing was a door he had cut, that he was the man who had built the seam and stood at it the half-inch he could spare. The program had been built so that I would walk to the door and find him there, holding it open, the only warmth in a white hall.

Discretion was a thing the program issued at a number.

There was a number for the elevator, a number for the balcony, a number for the day they would call me well. All of them were above mine.

At seventy-three I was cleared to decide nothing. He had cleared me anyway.

Adherence: 73 → 76.

He had paid the band to thank me for the no. He owned it. He could write three points back onto me from wherever he was standing.

Two messages, three minutes apart. The first said I had asked. The second said the asking was mine to take back.

They could not both be the record. His name was on the one that contradicted the building, in a place the building kept.

I put the phone down.

His message had come from elsewhere in the building. It always did on the mornings the tray reached the door without him.

This was one of those mornings. His absence was another way of being in the room.

The metronome was on the counter. The cloth was folded corner to corner, the fold I hadn’t been able to stop seeing.

He had folded it before the morning started. He had known then which door he would be at.

I hadn’t known it until the tray came without him.

I had started to keep a count of which mornings he carried the tray himself and which the building carried it for him. The body kept it.