The One Who Counts

The cup in Odessa’s hand was warm on one side and cold on the other. The warmth belonged to coffee. The cold belonged to the place beneath it: a black road under a black sky, a toll booth with no lamp, and a line of figures waiting beside the painted curb.

None of them had faces. All of them held cups.

“Who is keeping count?” asked the thing in Roy’s shape.

It stood just beyond the counter, where the stockroom door had been. Its shirt was Roy’s shirt, its tired smile was Roy’s smile, but the rest of it had the wrong patience. Real Roy had always looked as if he were late for somewhere. This thing looked as if it had already arrived.

Femmie’s hand closed around the edge of the counter. “Dess,” she said quietly. “Don’t answer.”

The telephone began to ring.

Once.

Odessa did not move. The black window of the cup showed the faceless line. One figure stepped forward. Its cup was empty.

Twice.

The Roy-shape tilted its head. “You know the answer.”

Three times.

The ring stopped. Somewhere in the store, paper rustled. Odessa looked toward the register. The laminated card lay beneath the till, though she had left it on top. A fresh line of red ink was spreading across its surface.

Femmie saw it too. Her face lost what little color it had left.

“Count the cups,” she whispered. “Not that one.”

Odessa set her jaw. On the counter stood Femmie’s coffee, her own untouched mug, and the cup beside the register that had appeared without anyone pouring it. Three cups. But the machine had been empty. The impossible cup was not to be counted normally. That was what Femmie had said, and Femmie had survived forty years by knowing which truths required obedience.

Three, then. Unless the cup’s reflection counted.

In the black coffee, the line had changed. Two figures had stepped forward. A third waited at the booth. Behind them, farther down the road, Odessa saw a fourth figure wearing a silver suit. It held a map.

The Counterman’s voice came from the cup, from the phone, and from Roy’s borrowed mouth at once.

“Who is keeping count?”

Odessa remembered the count room in Las Vegas, the green felt, the soft slap of cards, the way a bad shoe turned every player superstitious. People thought counting meant knowing what had already happened. It did not. Counting meant deciding what could happen next.