Ten Numbers

The roof has one bed and a rain barrel with a lid. In the bed an old phone is buried to the neck, only its small solar panel showing, tipped to the sun. Every floor has one like it. At dawn each sends one number, how wet its soil is, except seven's, which sends two. The second is tomorrow's. Odile copies them onto a sheet in a plastic sleeve on the stair housing, in black, and seven's second in pencil. Over the parapet the water truck is still at the curb.

Ten rows: nine floors and the roof. This morning's numbers, in black: 38, 41, 36, 40, 39, 37, 4, 40, 42, 38. Seven's is the 4. Beside it, in pencil: 31.

Odile has checked each pencil against the next dawn's black for as long as seven's phone has sent them. They have matched every time. She dug it up once and scanned it. Its record gave a year that has not come, and she buried it again where it was.

On the nail that holds the sleeve hangs a roll of blue tape, the kind everybody has. You take it down and pocket it.