Chapter 30: ch.30 [Almost?]

The ceiling was a long way up.

Astrid lay on the carpet with her hand in his and counted foam tiles, because counting was what her mind did when it was happy and had not been informed.

Forty. Forty-one.

Somewhere past forty-three, her eyes slid sideways.

They landed on a glass box across the room.

Soft pink light. A silver claw on its cable.

A heap of small round shapes piled behind the glass like a crowd waiting on a verdict.

She would have looked away.

She was an expert at looking away.

But one of the shapes was facing her.

Round. Soft.

Dark fabric on top and a single tuft standing straight up from the crown, as if it had been told to lie flat and refused on principle.

Two tiny lenses sat on its face.

One was crooked.

She knew that face.

She had watched it across a chessboard. She had watched it across a kitchen table, apologizing to a toaster.

Do not, said every sensible part of her.

She went on looking.

She did not say a word.

Beside her, the carpet shifted.

Seth had turned his head.

He followed her eyes across the dark, past the dead cabinets, to the pink glow.

He saw the glass.

He saw the shape.

His face did something slow and horrified.

"Oh, no."

"I did not speak."

"You didn’t have to."

"I have expressed no preference."

"You’ve been staring at it for ninety seconds."

"I was counting tiles."

"The tiles are over there."

She said nothing.

He sat up and dragged his cuffs down over his hands, which she was learning meant he was about to be brave.

"Do you want to try that one?"

He asked it carefully.

Like a man setting a piece on a square and holding his breath to see if it would be taken.

Astrid regarded the ceiling.

"It is a game of chance. Statistically unsound."

"Yeah."

"The payout is poor."

"Yeah."

"I would not waste a token."

"Okay."

He waited.

She got to her feet in one motion, far more dignified than lying on a carpet had any right to allow.

"I will observe," she said, "while you attempt it."

? ? ?

The claw machine hummed.

Up close it was bigger and meaner.

Fingerprints on the glass.

A little sign: 3 TOKENS. WIN BIG.

A joystick worn smooth by a thousand hopeful thumbs.

Seth fed it the last three from his cup.

The lights brightened.

A cheerful tune chimed, like a machine that knew something.

He rolled his sleeves up, which he did not need to do.

"Okay. Left. A little left."

The claw swayed.

Astrid stood behind his shoulder with her arms folded, tracking the cable the way she tracked a rook down a file.

"Further left."

"I know."

"Two centimeters."

"You said you were observing."

She closed her mouth.

He pressed the button.

The claw dropped, opened like a hand, closed around the plush’s soft middle, and lifted.

For one wonderful second the little thing hung in the air with its tuft trembling and its glasses askew.

Halfway up, the claw gave a sad shudder.

The plush fell face-down into the pile.

The tune chimed on, unrepentant.

"No," whispered Seth.

"Statistically, that was the expected result."

He turned out his pockets and found nothing.

She watched him do it.

Then she slid a hand into her purse and came out with three tokens, which she had been keeping in a little stack, in order, for a tally she had never intended to close.

She put them into his palm.

"That is a loan."

"Astrid—"

"I keep the ledger. It is my ledger."

He looked at the tokens.

At her face, set very straight, as if she were signing something.

He fed them in.

This time he took his time.

Left. Forward. Back a hair.

His tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth, which he did not know he did, and she knew precisely, and had filed under Do Not Mention.

The claw dropped.

Closed.

Lifted.

Higher this time. Past the heap. Past the lip.

The plush swung in the glow like a small soft pendulum, nearly at the chute, nearly there, nearly...

The claw let go.

It bounced off the rim and tumbled back into the pile.

The music stopped.

Seth stood with both hands on the joystick and his forehead against the glass.

"I had it."

"You almost had it."

"I had it."

"You did not. You almost did." A pause.

"That is a different, and more useful, category."

He did not lift his head.

She looked at the back of his neck.

At the cuff dragged over one knuckle.

At the single piece of hair that had defeated his gel, his barber and all of Thursday.

Something went through her chest.

She had no name for it.

She did what she did with things that had no name.

She put it in order.

"Seth."

"Yeah."

"You almost had it."

She said it slowly, each word set down alone, like a sentence in a language she had only just been taught.

"I believe in you."

The joystick stopped moving.

He turned.

Pink light lay on one side of his face, and she watched it land.

She watched him remember where he had heard it.

"That’s mine," he said quietly.

"I am returning it."

"You can’t just—"

"It was a loan," said Astrid. "I am settling the debt."

? ? ?

Seth laughed, and caught it, and pressed the heel of his hand to his eye.

"Okay. One more."

He turned out the cup.

Empty.

He patted his jeans.

Empty.

Behind him, Astrid had already opened her purse, and he could hear the small, terrible click of a clasp that meant a card, and a boy asleep on a counter, and a machine that would take whatever money she cared to feed it.

"Don’t," he said.

"It would take eleven seconds."

"I know."

"Then—"

"I know. That’s why."

She stopped.

He stood there with his hand flat against the cold glass, and the plush lay in the pile with its crooked face turned up toward him, patient as anything.

His other hand went to his chest.

To the inner pocket of the bomber.

The empty one.

He had checked it four times in front of the mirror.

Empty, he had told himself, four times.

A fifth time, at the door, before the stairwell, his hand had moved on its own and his head had caught up three steps later.

His fingers closed on something small and round.

Dented.

He drew it out.

A bottle cap, crimped around the edge, with a tiny queen drawn on the inside in blue ink that had faded from years of thumbs.

He had been eight.

He had been alone at a table with a chessboard and a chair no one sat in, and he had needed one more piece than he owned.

It had sat in his pocket through every bus ride, every test, every empty room since.

It had never once been asked to be anything but a queen.

It was a very ordinary bottle cap.

It was the size of a token, almost.

"Seth," said Astrid, softly. She had seen it.

"That is..."

"I know."

"You do not have to."

"I know."

"It is the one you reach for."

"Yeah." His voice went rough, and he let it.

"I’ve been reaching for it a long time."

He looked at the slot.

It was a small gold mouth with a sign over it that said TOKENS ONLY.

He held the cap over it.

Let go, he thought.

She’s not the only one who’s allowed to.

He pushed it in.

It stuck at the rim.

The machine whirred.

It considered.

Somewhere deep in its works, a gear thought about the matter, and a light blinked yellow twice, and then, with a grudging little clunk, the cap went through.

The lights came up.

The tune chimed.

3 CREDITS.

Astrid’s hand came up to her mouth.

"It accepted it," she whispered.

"I told you it was a good queen."

He took the joystick.

His thumb was shaking.

It was the same thumb that had shaken at the bishop, and the broadcast, and the door.

He let it shake.

Left.

Forward.

A fraction back.

The claw drifted across the glass.

Beside him, he heard her breathing.

She was counting.

He could see her lips moving, tiny and exact.

"...one. Two."

"What are you counting?"

"Nothing."

"Astrid."

"Nothing."

He pressed the button.

The claw dropped.

It closed around the plush’s soft middle.

It lifted.

Up through the heap.

Up past the duck and the potato and a bear he would not remember.

Up past the lip where it had failed twice.

It swung over the chute, slow and round, with its tuft quivering.

The claw held.

It held.

It held.

It held, and held, and held, and the whole arcade held with it, Tomas snored, the dead machines stayed dark.

Then the claw opened with a cheerful mechanical sigh.

The plush fell.

Thunk.

WINNER!

Six colors of light spun across the foam ceiling.

A tiny siren began to sing inside the machine.

Seth did not move.

Neither did she.

"First time I’ve won anything," he said, "in my entire life."

"That is not true."

"Name one."

"You won against Dmitri Wren."

"That was only one win I still lost."

"It was spiritually a win."

He started to laugh.

The tears he did not wipe away were, he decided, from the siren.

? ? ?

He knelt, and reached into the chute, and brought it out in both hands.

It was warmer than he expected.

Soft all the way through.

Round as a loaf of bread, no bigger than two palms together, worn a little at one edge from a long time at the bottom of the pile.

The tuft stood straight up.

The glasses were crooked.

He held it for one second, and then he understood what it was he was holding, and every drop of blood in his body went to his face.

"This is," he said.

"I didn’t. It looks. I didn’t pick it because. Okay. I picked it because."

"I know." said Astrid.

He put it in her hands.

At the far end of the arcade, the glass door rattled in its frame.

A thread of cold ran across the floor.

Seth turned his head toward it.

Nobody.

Only the street, and the moon, and the dark.

He kept watching it anyway, with a slow, uneasy tilt, listening for his phone.

It did not buzz.

He let out a breath.

Not tonight, he told it.

Behind him, Astrid stood in a red sweater under a pink light, and she looked down at what he had put in her hands.

Two stitched black dots.

A small stitched mouth, sewn a little off-center, as if somebody had tried to smile and lost his nerve halfway.

She knew whose face it was.

She did not look at him.

She could feel him a step to her right, still turned toward the door, still guarding a street that held no one, and she understood that he was giving her the one thing no one had ever thought to give her.

A moment with nobody watching.

She lifted it.

She brought it in against her chest with both arms, slowly, and held it there above her heart the way one holds a thing one has been told is breakable.

She shut her eyes.

On the machine, the siren wound down to one last small chime.

Somewhere in the dark of its belly, a bottle cap lay among a hundred gold tokens, a small queen finally set down.

Seth did not see her.

He was looking at the door.

And for the first time in her life, Astrid Lind did not count a single thing.