The Part She Lets Through

The doors have no handle on my side. I have checked twice, though the first time taught me nothing the second could improve.

I sit on the low bench beside them and watch the narrow seam between the panels. The terminal offers no clock. I have stopped trying to count its hours by the light, which never changes enough to be trusted.

Then a sound catches at the seam.

A chair leg scuffs. Something taps against a tabletop. The sounds arrive thin and distant, like they have crossed too many rooms before reaching me. I lean toward the doors anyway.

“Do you want me to turn it up?” a woman asks.

Shuyin’s sister. I know her voice from before: direct, low, careful with anything she cannot fix.

“No,” Shuyin says. “It’s loud enough.”

A pause follows. The sound could be a phone being moved, or a hand covering its speaker. I have no way to tell.

I straighten on the bench. The doors stay shut.

A small click comes through, then Shuyin’s recorded voice. There is a little room noise behind it, the scrape of a utensil and a quick breath before she speaks.

“I thought I could handle the noodles,” she says. “I made it through two bites before I had to stop pretending.”

The recording cuts off. For a moment, there is only the faint hiss that sometimes gathers around the sealed doors.

Her sister lets out a laugh. Not loud. The kind that escapes before a person has decided whether it is permitted.

“You really recorded that?”

“I told you. I was going to tell him.”

The sound thins around the words. I cannot be sure I heard the last one correctly. I hold still, as if a movement might scatter whatever remains.

Then Shuyin’s live voice comes through, quiet and close to the phone. “I know it’s silly.”

“It isn’t.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

Her sister makes a brief sound that might be another laugh. I know that answer of Shuyin’s. She uses it when she wants a conversation to stop at the edge of a feeling. I used to let her have the edge. I used to believe there would always be another evening to ask what she had meant.

I put my palms on my knees. The bench is solid beneath me. The doors are solid in front of me. Whatever is happening beyond them has no obligation to become clearer because I want it to.

A phone shifts. There is a muffled breath, then Shuqiao says, “You sound different on this one.”