Out of Step

You hold the cable out straight while he turns the last connector home with his thumbs. He sits back on his heels and wipes his forehead and leaves a streak. Nothing. A grackle walks along the parapet, watching.

Then the whole flock goes up off the antenna at once, and the box clicks, and a small green light comes on. Below you on the plaza one phone gives its rising tone. Then a dozen. Then you lose count.

The crowd lifts its phones higher. Beside you the woman holds her thumb to the glass of her phone, and the frost on a cream card melts in a circle under it, and two soft notes ring. She reads. She laughs, and puts a hand over her mouth, and keeps laughing. From every phone a voice begins to read a list, a little out of step with itself.

He is not laughing. He is looking past you at the east side, where a long brown thread of smoke hangs over the river. It has not moved with the wind.