The Party Under the Cloth

The phone rang again before Odessa could decide whether Roy had moved.

It was an ordinary ring, thin and metallic, coming from the Nightjar behind her. The sound crossed the red threshold without changing. Roy remained beneath the blank highway sign. The gray bundle in his arm shifted against his ribs.

Femmie stood behind the counter with both hands braced on the laminate. “Answer it.”

Odessa glanced at the booth’s cup. Steam still rose from its black surface. “You answer it.”

“I’m not the one who answered him.”

The phone rang a second time.

Roy lifted his head. His face was still turned away, but Odessa saw the side of his mouth. “Dess,” he called. “Don’t make them wait.”

The third ring began.

Odessa crossed the threshold. The red doorframe scraped cold against her shoulder, though the desert air beyond it was hot. She reached the phone on the wall just as the bell stopped and lifted the receiver.

“We’re closed,” she said.

For a few seconds there was only a dry hiss. Then a woman spoke in a voice that had been rubbed nearly smooth by distance.

“Is Royale Bibb there?”

Odessa looked through the front windows. Roy had not moved. The wrapped thing had begun to breathe more quickly. The gray cloth rose and sank against his forearm.

“Who’s asking?”

Femmie made a sharp gesture across the counter. Hang up.

The woman on the phone answered, “The one you counted.”

Odessa put the receiver down.

The lights went out.

Femmie swore under her breath and ducked behind the counter. Odessa moved with her, crouching beside the register. Outside, the pumps vanished. The desert became a flat darkness cut only by the red threshold and the pale sign beyond it.

Something knocked against the front door.

“Count,” Femmie said.

Odessa pulled open the till. Bills and coins lay in their compartments, but the arrangement was wrong. The quarters had been stacked beneath the pennies. A five-dollar bill bore a blue mark she did not remember. She counted aloud, starting with the ones.

At thirty-seven, a voice outside said, “Dess, it’s me.”

It sounded like Femmie.

Femmie’s hand closed around Odessa’s wrist. “Don’t answer.”

At forty-nine, the voice changed. Roy called from the other side of the glass. “You left the door open.”

Odessa counted fifty-seven. The wrapped thing knocked three times against its cloth.

At sixty, the lights returned.

The front door stood closed. Roy was still beneath the sign, separated from the Nightjar by the red threshold and several yards of impossible road. He had not advanced. The booth behind Odessa had not vanished, either, though its glass now reflected the store and nothing else.

On the counter, the paper cup waited.

A line of red letters had appeared around its rim.

TWELVE: GIVE THE CUP TO THE PARTY WHO WAS COUNTED AND DID NOT ARRIVE.

Below it, in smaller writing, someone had added:

THE CARRIER IS NOT THE PARTY.

Odessa read it twice. The second time, the letters looked wet.

Roy raised the sealed cup in his hand. “That’s the one.”

“Then why bring it here?”

“To make the delivery.”

“You can’t come inside.”

“I know.”

The answer was too quick. Odessa studied him through the glass. His shirt was Roy’s shirt, down to the grocery-list warnings crawling across the cotton, but the posture was wrong. Roy had always leaned toward exits. This figure stood squarely beneath the sign, patient and balanced, like someone who expected the road to remain exactly where it was.

The wrapped object shifted. A narrow shape pressed against the gray cloth, long enough to suggest a forearm. The fingers found the edge of the covering and curled there.

Odessa stepped to the booth counter. Her duplicate had disappeared. The chair behind the glass was empty, its dent still visible in the cushion.

“Where did she go?” Odessa asked.

No one answered.

She picked up the cup. It was warm, though no machine had filled it. The red doorframe pulsed faintly beneath her fingers. She carried the cup back toward the store, but stopped before crossing into the Nightjar.

Roy watched her.

“What was the name on the count?” she asked.

His head turned a fraction. “You know it.”

“Say it.”

The thing under the cloth began to breathe through its mouth. The sound was wet and shallow.

Roy said, “Odessa Larkin.”

Femmie’s face went gray. “Put the cup down.”

Odessa looked at the flyer Sheriff Rook had brought her. It lay beneath the register, folded in half. Roy’s photograph. Her name underneath. A lost person who had been entered under the wrong name.

The sealed cup in Roy’s hand had a strip of paper around it. She could not read the writing from this distance, but she knew the shape of the letters. Tall first stroke. Small hooked final mark. Her handwriting from the register margins.

The other cup—the one from the booth—was meant for the party who had been counted and had not arrived. If the list had counted Odessa under Roy’s name, then the party might not be Roy at all. It might be the person the list had called Odessa.

Her duplicate had arrived. Odessa had arrived. Neither could satisfy the rule.

Something else had been counted.

The gray cloth loosened.

Odessa saw a cheek first, pale and damp, then one eye opening beneath the fold. It was her eye. Not a reflection. Not the duplicate’s watchful face behind glass. The eye looked older, the lower lid bruised purple, but the small scar beneath the brow belonged to Odessa. She had gotten it at nineteen, when a cocktail glass broke in a casino stairwell.

The mouth beneath the cloth moved.

“Dess,” it whispered.

Odessa nearly dropped the cup.

Femmie caught her elbow. “Don’t give it to that.”

“It’s counted.”

“That doesn’t make it owed.”

“What does?”

Femmie looked toward the booth. “A name you can stand behind.”

The wrapped face turned toward Femmie. Its eye narrowed, recognizing her. Femmie took one step back.

Roy said, “She already paid with a name.”

The phone rang again.

Odessa did not move toward it. Once. Twice. The third ring began, and the overhead lights flickered.

The till lay open behind her. The red threshold waited in front. Roy held the sealed cup. The thing wearing Odessa’s face watched from beneath the cloth.

She could obey the seventh rule and count until she found what had gone wrong. She could obey the twelfth and give the cup to the counted party. The rules had never promised those actions were compatible.

Odessa set the booth cup on the floor between the threshold and the door.

“Come get it,” she told the wrapped thing.

Roy’s head snapped toward her. “It can’t cross.”

“Then it didn’t arrive.”

The third ring stopped.

For the first time, the figure beneath the gray cloth struggled against Roy’s arm. The cloth slipped to its shoulder. Odessa saw the left side of her own face, but the skin had been marked with black ink from temple to jaw. Numbers crowded the marks in cramped columns. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

The thing reached toward the cup.

Roy tightened his grip. “No.”

Odessa stepped over the threshold and into the store. The red door slammed behind her. From the other side came one hard impact, then another. The thing in the cloth began calling her name in Femmie’s voice, then Roy’s, then Odessa’s own.

Femmie shoved the register drawer closed. “What did you do?”

“I made it choose.”

The lights steadied. On the laminated card beside the till, a new line appeared beneath Rule Twelve.

THE PARTY WHO REACHES FOR THE CUP MUST BE ALLOWED TO ARRIVE.

Outside, the red threshold darkened. The impossible road was gone. Roy and the gray-wrapped figure stood on the pavement beside the pumps, where no door had ever been.

The cup remained between them.

Roy looked through the glass at Odessa. His sealed cup had split down the middle. Something inside it was trying to get out.