Chapter 7 · Untitled Chapter

They laid the ledger on the table before the first cup was poured, and that told me the order of the morning: paper first, coffee after. It is only ever done that way when the paper is the guest of honor.

The clerk carried it in a cloth, the way a thing is carried when the carrier does not want his hands remembered. He set it square to the table's edge, opened it to the page, and turned it so the page faced the room. Then he put the pen down beside it and stepped back with his hands folded, a man who had done only the part he was paid for.

Five witnesses. I counted them from the arcade, where the shade was still cold. Two of them I knew by their fathers. One I did not know at all, and he was the one who kept looking at the door.

The mabkhara was still warm from the morning. Oud, and under it the clean smell of a room swept at dawn.