FIRST THING - Zeke Malone's diary

Kitchen. Stove cold and staying cold tonight, and that's the thing I sat down to look at, so look at it. Last night's midnight batch got cancelled before I started it, and tonight's got cancelled before I even stood up to cancel it — that's the new part. It used to be the deciding came at the hatch. Then it came on the walk home. Now it's done lying down, before my feet find the floor, and the lying-down me says no to things the standing-up me put on the list himself. Breakfast never came off the counter either. Four hours, wrist cold on the wood, rain still going at the glass. And the first thing I did — before water, before anything — was check the book was shut. It was. Nothing drifted. I don't know what I expected to have moved in the night. Then the hatch at 10:40, not early, and the line showed up anyway, because the line always shows up, and I served what was there and they said thank you like it was a good day. And here's the trap, said plain for once: the hatch loves me back. My name over the counter, cans going across, see you tomorrow — all of it lands the same hour it's given. The book doesn't say anything. The book just waits. And Ruby will look at me when I say the word, and a hundred thank-yous don't weigh what one look from her weighs. So every morning the thing that answers fastest eats the thing that doesn't answer at all. That's the whole trick. No — half the trick. Other half is the note. Four weeks I've carried the second-pour note and told myself I'd write it clean. Clean ink, proper capitals. And tonight I finally let myself say why: it'd be the first line in that book that says I got something wrong. Eight months of measures, every one right or fixed the same hour it wasn't — the one thing I've ever done better than anybody — and the note comes in and says the second pour runs light, and you knew, and you circled it for a month. That book is the one room nobody ever laughed me out of. I didn't want the first crooked line in it to be mine. But the dream poured the wrong colour and I knew the measure was off before I looked. Knew it first, looked after. Backwards. And I'm doing it awake now too — knowing before facing. So I'm getting up and writing it now, ugly, while the page is still honest. — Back. Done. Ink smeared where my wrist dragged through it, capitals falling over by the end — doesn't matter. It's in. Dated. Shut. Four weeks, finished tonight, and the book didn't fall over with one crooked line in it. Tomorrow, before the cloth goes on the counter: Ruby, face to face, the straight version. I haven't walked it. I said first thing, and first thing has meant after for two weeks, and she knows it even being decent about it. The walk's the small piece — the wood-first bit is already named, the walking in is the bit nobody's done, and that bit's mine. The big piece is what the board wants at the end of it. Everything I've got lives in that book and the book doesn't leave my hands, and I can't stand in a desk room with my mouth saying yes and my hands saying never. That's the real reason the walk hasn't been walked, and Ruby's the one who'll make it real just by not blinking. I want her at the front when I do walk in. Boots on, can in my hand, her at the front of whatever benches there are. But the coin before that coin is the honest word — tomorrow, before the first can changes hands. Batch goes on when I'm up. Six brews before the hatch. If the morning comes in flat: kettle, page, plate, then the cloth. The body said no tonight and for once I believe it was the body and not the easy thing — the easy thing never tells you to sleep. The deciding came sitting up this time, pen in my hand. One stair above the new floor. Lights going off. Book's shut, and I wrote in it.