Five times that day the old man had answered to R-73 and pressed his thumb to the pad. On the fourth his split skin had opened. They had cleaned his blood off the glass before accepting him.
The young woman beside him folded a tissue round the thumb. Her companion was copying the numbers of those still waiting. Against R-73 he wrote: eleven years of overcollection. He left room for the amount.
“Who sent you?” the old man asked.
“Who would you like to have sent us?”
The young woman pulled the tissue tight. “Don't answer him. He thinks that's a clever question.”
Above window nine, R-74 went out. On the old man's phone the board still showed yesterday.
“Tell us what was here before,” she said.
“Before me?”
“Before this.”
He looked at the windows. “My mother told a story.”
There had been a house where a meal was laid every night for God. Whoever knocked was admitted. God, the keeper said, was difficult to recognize on an empty stomach. The neighbors sent bread. Soldiers came without their weapons and ate beside the people they were paid to watch.
“A monastery?” the young man asked.
“In my mother's telling, a kitchen.”
The keeper said a prayer before serving. Come hungry. Leave room for the next.
“My mother used to say it over a pot that had almost nothing in it. Then she would lift the lid, although we had all seen what was there. Sometimes a neighbor had brought something while our heads were bowed. I used to keep one eye open. Later I stopped.”
One night a man at the table began asking the guests who was missing. He wanted to bring the missing home. At first he remembered the names. There were too many. The keeper lent him a pencil.
In one telling, the man was a soldier. In another, his brother had been taken by soldiers. He wrote on the same kind of paper in both.
Years later the men who opened the prisons came to the house. They had the list. They asked the keeper which names were soldiers'. People were waiting outside for an answer. Some carried photographs. Some carried rope.
“And what did he do?” the young woman asked.
“He put the pot on.”
“That's where it ends?”
“That's where my mother ended it.”
The young man closed his notebook. “He could have named them.”
“Perhaps he did.”
“You can't tell it both ways.”
“You asked what was here before.”
The young woman took a roll from her bag. She broke it and gave the old man the larger piece. He held it in his good hand. He had been afraid to leave the seat for lunch.
At six, his number appeared over window nine. The window was closed. The voice said the call had been made. On his phone, beneath eleven years of overcollection, the matter became settled.
The young man opened his notebook again. “We'll need your name.”
“For the money?”
“For when we can do something.”
The old man gave it. The young man asked him to spell it. Beside the name he copied the amount from the phone, carefully, down to the last unit.
The woman helped the old man stand. “Will you come tomorrow?”
His ticket remained valid. Tomorrow's numbers began at one.
“Will you?” he asked.
“Someone will.”
On the steps she repeated the prayer. He joined her at the second sentence. The young man walked behind them. When they stopped, he asked how to spell the keeper's name.