STANDING NOTICE, WEEKLY. Your position on the program is 4,081. Movement since last notice: improved. Contributions are gratefully recorded. The pool is growing.
She gives on the first Tuesday of the month, the draw, one bag’s worth, and the points post by Friday. The room is cold at that hour and they say so at the desk, in the way of a thing that has been raised and answered. Points do not expire. This is stated on the notice, in the same size as everything else, and is the only promise on it. Interval requirements are waived for contributors in good standing. Ten years of Tuesdays. The nurse knows her arm better than she does and calls it a good arm, professionally, the way you would praise a road.
At night she does the arithmetic. Position over rate equals years to the door. She is careful to use last year’s rate, which was kinder, and the app in any case shows her position a week behind.
NOTICE OF REQUALIFICATION. To preserve fairness across cohorts, contributions recorded before the base date are restated at one half. Positions will adjust in the coming standing notice. Contributors in the affected cohort have been recorded as consulted. Deferrals may be reviewed at the contributor’s request. The base date is not the fault of any contributor.
She reads the notice twice, then puts it with the others, flat, in the folder with the elastic, and books a second Tuesday.
In the fourth year her daughter asked her to stop. She gave her the position and the movement since the last notice, and her daughter looked at the numbers for a while and did not ask again.
The ones upstairs — the twelve, people say, though nobody counts past the awnings — are seen at the distance balconies are built for. They do not seem to age, but then they do not seem, much, at all. Their years are held. Nobody has watched a held year being spent.
CORRECTION. Reports of a market in the held years of the deceased are without foundation. Held years of the deceased return to the pool. There is no market. Persons approached regarding such a market are advised that they were not approached.
A recipient was announced in the east, forty-one, restored to the working register, wished well by the program. The east is large. She cut it out and kept it in the folder with the receipts, at the front, where the elastic crosses.
Two Tuesdays a month now, and the arm less of a road. She is 3,977 and lighter every month in a way the scale confirms and the program does not ask about. What she wants has not changed since the first Tuesday; only the arithmetic has, and the rate, and the arm.
I was in this before the base date, she says, to the kitchen, on a Friday when the points have posted.
Her last notice says: improved.
TRANSFER OF STANDING. The position of the contributor, being unclaimed at close of records, passes with its accrued points to the successor named at enrollment or, where none is named, to the eldest of descent. The transfer requires no acceptance. Acceptance is presumed by descent. The successor’s first standing notice follows in the ordinary course.
The daughter reads it at the kitchen table with the folder open, the elastic looped over her wrist the way a thing is given at a fair, ten years of Tuesdays flat in front of her and a position in her name that she never asked to hold, improved, historical, hers.
The first Tuesday falls next week. The arm is a good arm; the nurse will say so, professionally, the way you would praise a road. Points do not expire.
The pool, the notice adds, is in excellent health.