After the House Lights

The last applause had the municipal quality of people who had got what they paid for and were willing to admit it.

Ivo stacked programs. The moustache on the conductor had multiplied. There were now three. Culture was thriving.

Saff stood in the west aisle as if the building might forget her if she sat now.

“Drink?” Ivo said.

“Outside. The bar thinks it’s Spireward.”

They went out the cheap door. Rain that had been waiting for an excuse. The tram bell. A man from the stage—the drummer, still in work clothes because performance sweat is honest—lit nothing and breathed like a person.

“You were loud,” Saff said.

“That was the job.”

“I stood.”

“I saw. You listen with your knees.”

Ivo felt like an eavesdropper on a city talking to itself. He stayed anyway. Ushers were furniture with opinions.

The drummer’s name was Pell, because of course it was. He lived in Meridian and hated Pair//Local prompts. He played here because Lattice still sold standing room, which meant the hall had not yet become a club.

“They want to number the aisle,” he said.

“Over my dead rota,” Ivo said.

Saff smiled at the rain.

A boy with an Old Circuit pin hovered, then asked the drummer if four beats in a row was history or just counting.

“Counting,” Pell said. “History is what the teacher does with the counting.”

The boy left, possibly to page seventy-nine.

They walked as far as the stall that sold dough in defiance of three zoning maps. Saff paid. Ivo tried not to. Pell failed to be famous at the stall, which was a relief.

On the way back the arena looked like a ship hull that had decided to be a building. Saff touched the brick.

“Same time.”

“I keep the aisle.”

Pell went toward Meridian and cumin and a landing with felt on the chairs.

Ivo locked the cheap door from the inside, then unlocked it again because locking a cheap door was a kind of lie.

He clocked out.

Civic Network asked if belonging had increased.

He typed: RAIN.

The survey did not have that box.

He sent it anyway.