Dock 12¶
You’re halfway through explaining to the coat check clerk why you need to return 37 raffle tickets when the radio on his counter crackles. Not a whisper or a hum—banned words, you note—and not the faux-vintage pop the convention center pipes into hallways, but a numbers station. 10932-45B. 10932-45B. The clerk’s name tag reads Dave, though the e is half-erased, as if someone tried to scratch it out with a paperclip.
“You’re the theater people,” Dave says, not a question. His fingernails are filed into sharp ovals, and he taps them against a clipboard where your tickets should go. “Those are live numbers. Part of the SETI overflow.”
Your sister’s voice hisses in your memory: Don’t let them scan the batch. They’ll see we only sold three. You’d promised to keep the fiction one more day, until the review board stops by the house. Until Mom’s chemo port heals enough for her to play the lead in The Women. You are treasurer of the Maplewood Players, which means you are also the person who explains to Dave that a box of pasteboard squares with ink smudged from desperate handling cannot be “live numbers.”
Dave leans forward. The radio switches to a woman’s voice: Prefix and the right files with an external database. “High overhead,” he says, as if you’re in on the joke. “They route their data through us. You return these, you’ll corrupt a signal that’s been waiting since ’63 to find a cosmic pen pal.”
You think of the Maplewood Players’ budget, scrawled on the back of a Denny’s receipt in your coat pocket. $127.50. Enough for one more run of The Women, if you lie about the ticket sales. Enough to keep your sister from having to tell Mom the truth: that no one comes anymore, that the cancer isn’t the only thing killing the show.
A woman in a moth-eaten stole approaches the coat check, coughing like she’s trying to dislodge a lung. Dave hands her a ticket stub without looking. “Your beaver fur,” he says. “It’s been getting compliments.”
The stole-woman glares. “It’s my sister’s. She died in ’57.”
“Still getting compliments,” Dave says.
You set the box of raffle tickets on the counter. “What if I just… leave them here? As a donation?”
Dave’s eyes glitter. “They’d have to be logged. And logged items require a witness. You’d need to fill out Form 12-B, and I’d need to—"
Your sister appears, stage-right, in her thrift-store mink and too-bright lipstick. She holds a coffee cup that says Property of the Kettering Family. “Darling,” she trills, “I see you’re handling the logistics.”
Dave stands straighter. “This is about the numbers, miss. They’re part of a larger search.”
She blinks. “How romantic. We’re all just little satellites, sending out our sad little signals.” She turns to you. “The review board called. They’re coming early. Mom’s… performance is imperative.”
You feel the lie curdle in your throat.
Dave clears his throat. “If you’re going to do this, do it now. I’ve got a shift change in ten.”
Your sister meets your eyes. For the first time, you see the tremor beneath her cheekbones.
You pick up the box. “Log them as lost,” you say. “Say they were stolen from the snack bar. I’ll fill out the form.”
Dave nods. The radio falls silent.
As you walk away, your sister hisses, “What will you tell Mom?”
You don’t answer. The box feels heavier than it should, as if the tickets are slowly absorbing the weight of all the signals no one ever answers.
Behind you, Dave says to the stole-woman, “Your sister’s fur? Still killing it.”
The stole-woman mutters, “She hated beaver,” and you step into the fluorescent glare of the convention center, where the only thing playing is the quiet chaos of people pretending to be who they’re not.