The fish market keeps its own weather under the awnings. The cat keeps the market. Gray going on iron. She eats a rat from the head in front of whoever is watching. She reads the scale before the needle settles. The stallholder recalibrates. She is right again. When she faces the hill, the boats stay in, whatever was paid for.
She talks. The other cats keep to the roofs. They saw what she gave for the words. They are not saying.
The man with his wife's voice on the evening plan buys sardines on Fridays. She takes the head he owes her.
"You kept the voice. Whose sleep does it help?"
He comes on Tuesdays now. She asks him nothing.
To the man whose earpiece answers first: "Does it eat for you too?" He takes it out. Nothing of his own comes. To the gulls, one word. They move to the next roof and stay moved.
The ice-man's widow misquotes him. The cat gives the sentence back, nine winters old, tone and all. The widow cries into the herring. Buys nothing. The cat finishes her fish. Nobody licensed that sentence.
The counterparty of record registered an interest. It found nothing to attach to. No birth entry, license, continuation plan. No renewal date or sample to ration. The men in clean shoes itemized the market and left with the list they came with.
Every phone has tried. Playback: awnings, water, gulls. Where her voice stood, room-tone. The market memorizes her by mouth. Her sayings travel with the errand boys.
Unlicensed speech, broadcast, commercial zone. The fines fell on the listeners. For a month the stalls turned their backs whenever she spoke. They weighed their fish. Her ribs came up.
Children cannot be fined for listening to her. She talks to children.
The girl sweeping the harbor stairs asked what the words had cost. The cat watched her for the length of an incoming wave.
"I remember you without being paid," she said. "Learn it before it goes."
On Thursday, with the rain as purchased, she crossed the square and took the steps up. The cameras filed her departure as weather. The other cats came down from the roofs. They sat in her places, not talking. Under the awnings the market said her sayings to itself.
The girl sweeps the stairs and says them to the water. One a day, unpaid. On the hill, the gate stays open.