— No that’s okay hey I’ll do it for you and I mean we’ll make this here discount rate like ten percent okay? Like that makes it easier to figure up where you just move the dot, so that’s…
— Fine yes you move it goodbye, it’s starting to…
— No wait we have to figure it up hey seven, eight…
— There are twelve tickets they cost nine sixty, now goodni…
— Eleven, wait there’s thirteen here so that means like if twelve cost…
— Wait there can’t be, there were twelve of you on the train I bought twelve…
— There’s thirteen go ahead and count them so like if twelve cost nine sixty then one, twelve into nine wait, ninety-six no wait, seven what’s seven twelves wait seven tens is…
— Listen if there are thirteen then thirteen of you went in with Mrs Joubert and only twelve came back out now who…
— Wait eight, eighty cents each right? So eighty move the dot wait, seventy-two plus what am I giving you, plus eight seventy-four…
— Listen! who went in and didn’t come back out, did you…
— Wait nine forty-six right? I mean I can barely see five, six…
— Look we must have lost somebody! Will you…
— And thirty-five, forty-five I can’t hardly see I almost gave you a dime, wait, here’s a penny forty-six, right?
— No listen who went in with you on that field trip and didn’t come back out.
— Who Mrs Joubert?
— No! one of your…
— How do I know hey look out you’re dropping…
— And look what are you giving me this for this money, I just gave you the tickets to turn in didn’t I? You lent me the money to pay for them now turn them in and get it back and if you want me to pay you this int…
— What?
— I said you have the tick…
— No but it’s these two separate deals you know? I mean there’s this here loan which that’s one then there’s this where I bought these here discounted tickets off you so nobody gets screwed hey? Mister Bast? I mean like this here Mister Y which…
— I don’t want to hear about Mister Y! Just, goodbye I’ll…
— I mean there’s no big rush to pay it back okay…? the voice pursued over the high grass — because hey Bast…? its harsh edge followed him down the weeded ruts where the trees closed overhead — didn’t I tell you maybe we can use each other…? He walked faster looking, listening as though something had moved that instant before his look stilled a torn branch, a tire nested with leaves, the porthole ajar in a foundered washing machine then abruptly the car filling the turn as though it had simply chanced upright there, windows framing limbs that might have been caught in some random climax of catastrophe as he passed silent, distinguishable only as movement till the road’s end filled with illumination flinging his shadow suddenly forward in the headlights behind him and, at the gate there, as suddenly gone. He pulled it shut on the stubbled lawn infiltrating the terrace bricks fronting the studio where the screen door shook on the risen wind hung twisted on one hinge. Beyond it the door stood open. Next to it something, the handle of something, a shovel handle now he came closer, protruded through a broken pane, and thunder gently shook the space he left behind to crush glass underfoot, stepping inside. He stopped. Up, through the balcony rail, light cut across the door to the hayloft and was gone. A plate cracked under his step as he drew back and knocked the shovel to the stone floor, and there he crouched, clutching the shovel handle.
— Who’s there! he rose slowly and pushed the light switch by the door. Nothing happened. — Who’s up there! he called loudly, raising the shovel, crouching again as light danced past the door above, then through it to the stairhead to break down on him between the eaves.
— Yes? Who is it?
The shovel came down slowly. — Who… is that!
— Oh it’s you Edward, watch where you step.
— You, who… who… The light caught his face square, then the smashed ink bottle flooding the carpeted stone toward the stairs.
— You look quite threatening with that shovel, I’m glad I…
— But the… Stella? What… She’d turned away with her light back into the hayloft as he mounted the stairs. — What’s happened!
She sat on an end of the bed dangling a flashlight. — What you see, she said, moving the light now over drawers jammed open at angles, a lampshade crushed, a spoon, a dresser scarf and Piston’s Harmony torn through the spine, sheet music and a player piano roll flung toward the opened window he walked past her to close and sink on the windowseat there, poking into its opened drawer.
— But what, what would anybody… he stared where her light fell on a Bach Wagner Program of Miss Isadora Duncan and Mister Walter Damrosch at Carnegie Hall Wednesday Afternoon February 15,19u, at 3 o’clock — why anybody would…
— No I opened that… her light swept over postal views of Cairo, — looking…
— But what looking for what! he was on his feet again — how did, where did you even come from!
