ANNUAL AUDIT OF RETENTION — TRANSCRIPT OF SITTING
The subject arrived forty minutes early and was observed, through the glass of the waiting area, mouthing something to himself with his eyes shut. This is not scoreable and is recorded here at the auditor’s discretion.
Subject: male, eighty-one, retired from the stage. Estate held in words of proven retention. Balance at opening: one hundred and sixty-two.
Method: the standard battery. The auditor reads each item once. The subject repeats. Retention is scored on the repeat. Per the schedule of charges, hearing is part of retention: items heard are billable whether or not retained.
ITEM 1. Target: The kettle is on.
Response: The kettle is on.
Scored: retained.
ITEM 2. Target: Thank you for waiting.
Response: Thank you for waiting. I have been waiting a long time, you know.
Scored: retained. Surplus words disregarded.
ITEM 3. Target: The office is closed on Saturdays.
Response: The office is closed.
Scored: partial. The subject was offered the item a second time, at the second-hearing rate. Before the second hearing the subject adjusted the instrument in his ear, both hands, forty seconds. The adjustment is not billable. The hearing is. Response: The office is closed. The day would not come back. Scored: partial, twice heard, twice billed.
ITEM 4. Target: No ifs, ands, or buts.
Response: Unbutton this sleeve. The arm remembers the war it was in.
Scored: not retained. Auditor’s note: delivery excellent.
ITEM 5. Target: The forms are in the drawer.
Response: The forms are in the drawer, my lord, and the drawer is in the river, and the river is in spate, and what the river holds it holds.
Scored: not retained. Auditor’s note: the subject stood for this one.
ITEM 6. Target: Please have your account ready.
Response: Madam, my account is forty winters long and every coin in it is a night I gave away to strangers in the dark, twice on matinee days.
Scored: not retained.
The subject was cautioned that only the battery is scoreable. The subject replied that he has retained eleven thousand lines and was told they are not his. He asked whose they are. The auditor consulted the schedule. The lines of the stage are held by the estates of their authors; a player retains them under license, and the license dies with the run. The subject said he understood. He said it the way the battery wants things said: flat, once, nothing added.
ITEM 7. Target: the standard verse, four lines, read once for retention.
Response, verbatim:
Sit down. You have come far, and the hour is odd.
It is late in the play, and the lamps are being counted.
Stay for the part where I remember you.
The subject stood without being asked and the spine came up out of him like a younger man’s. This is not scoreable and is recorded here at the auditor’s discretion.
Scored: three of four. The fourth is not disputed and is not printed.
ITEM 8 was not administered.
TALLY. Retained this audit: two, and two partials. Hearing charges, eight hearings at the posted rate, less nothing: debited. Balance at close: one hundred and forty-one. Reassessment in one year, per the schedule.
CONCLUSION, AS PRINTED ON THE FORM: The patient failed.
Attached by the auditor, against practice: one page, unscored, in the auditor’s own hand, being a fair copy of Item 7. The attachment has no field and no rate. The form provides no way to refuse it. It is filed.
On leaving, the subject paused at the two doors of the audit room, the marked and the unmarked, and asked, unprompted: Which door is mine tonight? Not an item. Not scored. The auditor is unable to state which door was taken.