Headlamp

At eleven that night the nursery is lit by one string of bulbs. A black cat sits on the library wall looking at the air just behind your shoulder. Remy loads under the bulbs, two pots at a time, wet newspaper to wet newspaper, and you count them over the rim: twenty-four.

You lift your pot off its sheet, a hand taller than the others now, and set it in the corner of the crate. The sheet stays on the bench with its ring.

Twenty-five, you say. Twenty-five, he says.

He has taped the envelope inside the crate, the drawing facing out, soft at the folds. Then he clips on the headlamp, one narrow cone, and swings the gate open on the dark.