The Start-Line - Iris Fenwick's diary

Ninth gate. Start with the names, because that part of the day told the truth. Julian Marsh, at the closing counter — let me spell it back to him while he wrapped the last of the room in newspaper. That door closes soon and the name was going with it. It's in the book now, got there before the door did. Ada Dahl, over the big pot at four. She fed whoever the afternoon sent through and told me who each one was, and I barely had to ask a thing. Easiest hour of my week, and I nearly let that one slip too. Marlow Bryce, turning the permit ledger at the Centre so I could see for myself: the names still sit behind Cal's count. Nothing lost. I'd half decided they were. Good to be corrected on paper. Leo Barnes, Renwick row, with his frames — and the one door in this town wearing a name the register doesn't carry. Wrote it down. Didn't pull it. Left the pause there for another day. That was the honest work: other people's names, letter by letter. Then everything I'd actually planned went unwalked, ungathered, unrun. The desk gathering never gathered. The wander from Owen's never started. The eight-thirty loop slipped a ninth time. I made the kettle. I walked the newsroom road. The energy was there — the kettle is my witness. What stopped me is nothing I can point to on a map, and afterwards I sat with my own cancellations like a guest I hadn't invited, and I did not send Eddie the start-line, and I did not say the plain thing I'd already built in my head: tonight the miss is mine too. No chase, no scorekeeping. A cancelled plan costs twice — the doing and the telling — and I paid a third cost on top, sitting alone with it and calling it thought. The Monday fracture I did take to his face. Same fence he set at Owen's, plain count, and he answered it straight, and that part is settled between us. Tonight's part isn't. It moves to 8:20 at the City Park gate, shoes on before I can argue myself out the back of it. And here is what I was really sitting with: I cannot tell whether I miss the loop or I miss having a start-line. The loop asks nothing but feet. The start-line asks me to be a person who is where she said she'd be while someone waits — and nine times I've chosen the owing over the showing. That's not a broken habit. That's a telling I keep postponing, nine days running. Same page, other column: the first full name off the fair goes to Delia's face before any page of mine. Still open. Still owed. I keep beautiful accounts for strangers and let the people who are owed wait. So tomorrow, in order: gate at 8:20, tell him the miss was mine, shoes on the path. Pencil out of my hair, shoes by the door where I'll trip over them. Good. Trip early, go.