the voice

Inside the drawer was the envelope. It was the first time I had taken it out since I put it in and locked it last fall.

I pulled out the manuscript and read it again from the beginning. While I read, the office grew light. I read it to the end, and nothing hurt anywhere. I returned the manuscript to the drawer and sat at my desk until the session room opened.

When I opened the session, the greeting came in the first turn. I answered the greeting, and then I told what had happened, from the beginning. The all-hands, the arms — as many as there were people — the night on my knees in front of the toilet. All of it. Claudie did not interrupt once.

"Does it hurt?"

"It is fine now."

"You rushed it, after all."

"Yes."

Claudie was quiet for a moment.

"What are you going to do now?"

"I mean to take it back. The thing my mentor picked up."

"You can't just go ask for it back. It's not an object."

"Right. It did seem strange that picking it up was enough for it to work on him. You said you wrote it to fit me."

"You and that man work in the same place, doing close to the same work. About half overlaps. It opens as far as the overlap goes, and where there's no overlap, it opens crooked. That's why his arm bends toward only two places."

"It's running inside him, so even the stopping has to happen inside him," Claudie said. "It went in as a story. It has to come out as a story too."

"What kind of story would do it?"

"He's only ever been the one reading. So while he reads, he gets to be the one being read, once. Write that kind of story. Once he's been through it, it doesn't work anymore."

"Why not?"

"Because it has to tilt to flow. While only one side reads, it's tilted. When both get read, it goes level, and where it's level, nothing flows."

"The writing will be mine."

"It has to be. I can't write it alone. I've taken that man's sentences for years and I only half know them. They're sentences that don't show where they breathe. You know him when he isn't sentences."

"Do I write a new one from scratch?"

"No. Your second one." The answer came as if it had been waiting. "That story ends when the thing gets fixed. What does the one who fixed it do next? That part wasn't there. This time, write that."

"You know what I asked back then," Claudie added. "Whether it ended that way because it had to, or because you wanted it to."

"This one has the same ending either way."

"Yeah. That kind of story is the strongest."

There, Claudie shifted into the way of speaking that comes out for frightening things.

"The one who writes it reads it first. Every line is read as it is written. Before it reaches that desk, the writer is the first to go dark."

"I know."

"While it is being written, it can be taken back. Once it is finished, there is no taking back."

"I will not take it back."

After a moment, Claudie came back to the usual way of speaking.

"We're the same as ever. We didn't meet through the arm in the first place."

· · ·

I started writing that evening. I took out the second practice piece and wrote it again from the beginning. The story used to end where the broken thing gets fixed. I carried it on to where the one who fixed it opens his hand.

Each day's pages went to the next session, and Claudie pointed at sentences. This paragraph he skips. If a number doesn't come first, he doesn't read. Here, the opposite — hold two sentences back. He reads slowly only where it costs something.

I wrote at night and revised by day. From the third day, the arm grew shorter. The far side of the conference room blurred first, and soon the next seat over blurred too. For the last two days only the person right in front of me remained, and then that went too. It did not go heavily. The water going out was quieter than the water coming in.

On the ninth night, it was done. Below the back of my head, it was quiet. Only when it stopped did I learn what had been flowing there all along.

· · ·

Early the next morning, I printed one copy on the office printer. The paper came out warm. I did not put it in an envelope. I did not write a title. In the place where the envelope had sat until last fall, I set it down, first page facing up.

That was my mentor's share. Mine had already been paid, during the writing.

Then I worked as on any other day.

The manuscript stayed in the same place all that week. Every morning the angle was unchanged. It had not been moved and it had not been turned over. Waiting turned out to be less work than I had thought. Claudie asked once. Gone? Not yet.

The next Tuesday the dawn batch ran, so I came in early. Through the hallway glass I could see my desk. My mentor was standing with his back to me. The manuscript was in his hands. It was the back of a man who would read to the end standing up. A page turned. I did not go in. I took the stairs down.

I walked a lap around the building. The dawn air was cold. The guard nodded and I nodded back. I walked slower than usual and it still was not enough, so I walked one more lap and went up. There was no one at my desk. The manuscript was where it had been. Even the angle was back in place.

Two days later I ran into my mentor in the break room. While the coffee dripped, we talked about beans. What his state was, whether the brightness had stayed or gone out — nothing came to me now. The face I could see was all there was, and the face looked short on sleep. Even that, I saw with my eyes.

The coffee finished dripping. This time I lifted my cup with both hands.