Zadie
My lift is working, Zadie wrote. I resent it. I had a whole complaint prepared.
The reply came while she was pulling off her shoes.
Tell it to me. My cat has stopped listening.
She smiled at the little message. In the poetry room she called herself UpperFloor. Her favorite person there was NotACat. They had been talking for six weeks without asking about work.
During the day, everyone wanted Zadie’s opinion. She traded digital coins in the invented market of Vale Exchange: assets whose price rose or fell as people bought them. She had made some costly bets years ago. Now she studied each purchase and hated being called timid.
That afternoon Silas Orr had outbid her in a coin auction. Highest offer won the lot. She’d stopped at her limit; he’d paid more. On the public stream he had said, “I wanted it more.”
She’d wanted to throw her screen out of the window.
To NotACat she wrote about a lift that sometimes stuck between floors. Her father used to knock three times on the doors and say, “Hello, house. Wake up.” Even now, alone in it, she sometimes knocked.
Does it work? NotACat asked.
No. But it makes waiting less lonely.
My cat likes company only if nobody admits that’s what it is.
They talked until her food went cold. At the end she sent him a poem. It was hers, four lines about shoes by a door.
Two shoes wait by the door.
One leans on the other.
When I come home,
I leave them close.
Don’t show anyone, she wrote.
I won’t.
Silas
Silas Orr read those four lines twice. His cat slept on the clean shirt he needed tomorrow.
Then he remembered the lift.
Zadie Venn had told that same story in an interview last year. Silas had watched it because they were appearing on the same market panel. He remembered her knocking on the interviewer’s desk, three times.
UpperFloor was Zadie.
He stood up, disturbing the cat, and went to the kitchen. He had told her things he would not have told his public rival: that he hated eating alone, that he couldn’t always tell a good poem from a bad one, that he regretted not visiting his mother more often.
He could tell her now. He should.
Instead he wrote, Those shoes sound as if they’re expecting someone.
She answered, Maybe they are.
He put the phone down. For one evening he kept the part of her that didn’t sigh when she heard his name. By morning, that small choice felt much larger.
Zadie
On Friday they agreed to meet at a cafe. Before booking a table, Zadie said they should exchange full names and work.
Zadie Venn. Vale Exchange. Please don’t be horrified.
His answer took three minutes.
Silas Orr. Same market. I worked out who you were last night, from the lift story. I should have told you then.
She read it standing by the sink.
You knew while you were replying about my poem?
Yes.
And let me keep thinking you were someone else.
Yes. I’m sorry.
She cancelled the table. Then she left the poetry room for the night.
His one message arrived the next morning.
I held back my name because I liked being someone you wanted to hear from. That gave me a choice you didn’t have. I won’t contact you again unless you ask.
He didn’t contact her. On Monday they both bid in another auction. He won. She was cross with him, with the market, and with the fact that she still wanted to tell NotACat about her day.
On Thursday the lift stopped. She knocked three times before she could stop herself. That evening she remembered the question he’d asked before he knew her name: whether it helped. He hadn’t made fun of her father. He hadn’t turned her answer into advice.
She wrote, One meal. At the cafe. I haven’t decided anything else.
Understood, he replied.
At the cafe
Silas stood when she arrived, caught his sleeve on the chair, and nearly knocked over the water.
Zadie wished he hadn’t made her smile so soon.
“I don’t want us pretending work isn’t work,” she said after they ordered. “I’m still going to bid against you.”
“I know.”
“And you’re not going to let me win.”
“No.” He looked worried. “Should I have taken longer to say that?”
“It was the right length.”
Their food came. For a while they ate and talked about his cat. Her name was Chair, because that was what she thought people were for.
“Terrible name,” Zadie said.
“She hasn’t complained.”
“She can’t.”
“You haven’t met her.”
He asked about her father. She told him he lived across town and still knocked on lifts. She’d had supper with him yesterday.
Silas listened. She noticed him stop reaching for his phone.
“Could I read your poem in the room?” he asked later. “Without your name. I think people would like it.”
Her warmth faded. “No. I sent it to you.”
He looked down at his plate. “All right.”
“That includes clever ways of quoting it.”
“It stays with me.”
She waited. He didn’t explain why she ought to feel differently. He asked the waiter for more water, then sat with the awkwardness he’d made.
Zadie took out her phone and opened the four lines.
“You can read it here,” she said. “To me.”
“I may ruin it.”
“I’ll tell you.”
He read too fast. She made him start again. On the last line he looked up, and she nearly looked away.
“Better,” she said.
His lunch had gone cold. She moved the warm bread toward him. He tore it in half and offered her a piece.
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