Chapter 6

The Roof

By morning the square had a new argument about bottle colors. The three words were a closed tab. FinalBoss had posted that he was stepping back to listen, which meant he was drafting a shorter question. Few had already replied, under his own post, that few understand patience.

Nia found Daira on the roof. The roof was not a view people put on postcards. From it you could see the street, the orchard wall, the two kitchens, and one billboard for Shielded Spring. The billboard promised a clearer future and showed an empty bottle doing its best.

"Twelve people use the envelopes every day," Nia said. "The Timeline has more voices than that before breakfast."

"The Timeline does not pay the baker," Daira said.

They stood without making a scene of standing. A delivery cart came around the corner. The robot on it had a speaker, a small screen, and the patience of a machine that had been told not to have a personality. Daira leaned on the rail.

"Rice and greens," ze said. "The usual."

The robot chirped, which was not a speech, and rolled toward Pallas.

"Crumb is in the hall," Nia said. "Fred left a sticker on the stair. I peeled it. He is coming up anyway. He says he has the last question."

"He had the last question yesterday," Daira said. "The jar answered it."

"This one is not about the coin."

Fred arrived out of breath, which he would later describe as passion. The lanyard was still stickered. The phone was already awake, the doorway photo queued the way a person queues a toast they have practiced in a mirror. Few was on the speaker, small and bright, waiting to be a crowd.

"One clip," Fred said. "Then we leave you alone. Say you changed sex. Say it like a joke. People can share a joke. A fact just sits there. Humor is how we make it normal. You want normal. I am helping."

Few's voice came out of the phone, tinny and pleased. "Few understand shame. If you will not laugh, you are hiding. The Timeline has a right to the version of you that tested better."

Daira took the phone, not to throw it, which would have become the clip, but to turn the screen so the doorway faced the sky and not the lunch. Ze looked at Fred until the practiced toast fell apart in his mouth.

"I changed sex," ze said. "I was a man. I am not a man now. That is the whole joke, which is to say it is not a joke. It does not have a second half where I switch back on Thursdays. It does not have a poll. It happened. You may repeat the sentence if someone is actually confused. You may not wear it as a costume and call the costume bravery."

Fred glanced at the phone, hoping Few would supply a better line. Few said, "Few understand this," and then, quieter, that the bottle colors were getting more replies anyway.

"Good," Daira said. "Let them. A bottle is a better argument for them than a person. They can be wrong about a bottle all week and the bottle will not have to eat lunch in the comments."

Fred peeled the sticker off the lanyard himself. He did it badly. The paper curled, the crown tore, and he put the scrap in his pocket as if a pocket could file it. He did not ask for the third box again. Nia watched him go down the stairs. The door at the bottom opened inward. He bumped it. He would learn, or he would not. The city did not require his education before it served food.

"Hess called," Nia said, when the stairwell was only footsteps. "She wants another dinner. She says memory is a kind of lock. She also said to tell you she used the right name, and that she is sorry she rehearsed it."

"Tell her to come eat. No wigs. No napkins with a job. And tell her the apology can stay home. The name was already in the header. Using it is not a speech."

The cart came back. The box was warm. Daira ate standing up, which a roof allows and a ceremony does not. Across the street, Vesta's checker raised a hand out of habit, though the only plate left to check was already in Daira's hands. One plate. A small law. It held.

Nia nodded at the billboard. "Someone will be back. Not this week. A new three words. Or three pictures. Pictures travel farther."

"Then we read them," Daira said. "If they let the same coin through two shops, we say no, and we say why, in a sentence a baker can repeat. If they are only here for the old photograph, we do not hold the door. That story is over. It ended when I changed sex, and it did not end in their replies."

The wind lifted the corner of a poster on the lamp below. Daira did not go down to flatten it. Some flapping is just paper. A city does not have to be loud to be a city. The envelopes stayed sealed. The three words stayed struck through. Hir name stayed in the header of the form, the same one every morning, unread by anyone who was not filling one out. That was the best kind of unread. The office door, several floors down, still opened inward. Someone would bump it. Someone would learn.

Daira finished the rice. The box was empty. The Timeline had already found a bottle to be angry at, which meant the morning had gone about as well as a morning can.

"Sapling is my city," ze said.

Nia did not answer. She did not need to. Below them the kitchens were open, the orchard gate was shut, and the square had a jar with a no in it that anyone could go and read. One coin. One plate. One name. The rest was noise, and noise could have the street. The roof was done with it.