The Afternoon Belonged to Nobody

He stayed where he was for a moment, then stood and took away the cloth. Under the cloth was a wooden platform on brass feet. A curved track passed through two painted doors; on it sat a thumb-sized tin train beneath a wooden swallow on a copper rod.

“It's a toy.”

He nodded.

“That's what needed the key?”

“Yes.”

“Not a pump?”

“No.”

“Not a clock?”

“There are no hands. I tried to tell you.”

She looked at the train again.

“You let me go out for a toy.”

“I thought you were checking the lockers. You said that was on your route.”

She hadn't. She had thought it and let him think it too.

“Why didn't you show me?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“You could have made a socket,” she said.

“I started one. It's there.”

He showed her a piece of brass with a square hole half filed through it.

“Then why ask me?”

“Because you said you'd found keys. I thought it was an ordinary thing to ask.”

“What did you think I was asking?”

Qiao picked at the mud in the crease of her thumb.

She remembered bringing things home, checking every door for light and turning cans so the intact labels faced outward, as though appearance could add value.

“Something important,” she said.

They sat quietly while evening gathered outside his window.

“Where did you get it?”

“You brought the mechanism in that box of scrap.”

“I gave you that because I couldn't do anything with it.”

“I know.”

She reached for the key.

He rose, took the platform from the bench, and set it beside her bowl. On the back was a small shaft. The key slid onto it.

Qiao turned it once.

“Six turns,” he said. “No more. The spring's old.”

She turned it five more times.

He touched a lever. The train jerked forward.

For a moment, nothing else happened. Then the swallow dipped on its copper rod, and the mechanism found its music.

The first four notes went up. The fifth fell where Qiao expected another high note. There was a long pause, a soft clunk, and the four notes tried again.

The train went through one painted door and emerged through the other.

“That's wrong.”

“I couldn't make it go any higher without moving the whole comb.”

“The song.”

“I know.”

“You don't. It doesn't go like that.”

He looked down.

“That's how you sing it.”

She hummed those four notes when counting screws, straining water or waiting for a pot. She never remembered the next note correctly; she simply began again.

“You could have found the real tune,” she said.

“I didn't know there was one.”

He touched the uneven wooden wing.

“I thought it was yours.”

The swallow dipped. The train disappeared through a door.

Qiao waited for it to come out.

Her face changed before she could stop it.

“Don't,” she said.

Her sleeve failed to hide her eyes. She bent forward and let his shoulder rest beside hers while the little train made its wrong music.

When the spring stopped, the swallow hung with its beak pointed at the table. Qiao took the key off.

“Who is it for?”

He looked at her so carefully she wished she hadn't asked.

“You.”

She touched the two doors. One was blue. One was bare wood, with a black square for its opening.

“I can't pay you for all that.”

“You don't have to.”

“Don't say that if you mean later.”

He set the unfinished brass socket beside the train.

“I was going to give it to you with this. Whether you found a key or not.”

For the first time all day, she believed she had been allowed to come back empty-handed.

* * *

The next morning, Qiao and her boyfriend carried food back to Mrs Han. They ate rice in the east waiting room. Mrs Han brought out a jar of peaches and insisted they take the larger pieces. Sun lay across the yellow coat on her knees. Mrs Han showed them a dry maintenance store with bolts, wire and rubber seals; Qiao promised to return Thursday.

The afternoon belonged to nobody yet.

“I want something,” she said.

“All right.”

“What you said I could ask for.”

He set the file down.

“An afternoon,” she said.

“Here?”

“With you.”

He moved the lamp aside to clear the table.

Qiao fetched the little train from the shelf beside her tin of screws. They wound it six turns and watched it go through the doors.

“Why doesn't the swallow fly away?” she asked.

“I couldn't work out how to make it come back.”

She touched the bigger wing.

“It'll need another one.”

“A wing?”

“A swallow.”

He reached for a scrap of wood. Qiao slid her good hand into his and kept it on the table.

“Tomorrow.”

He looked at the wood, then at her.

“Tomorrow,” he agreed.

She kept the key beside the platform, close enough to turn without getting out of her chair. The tune made its familiar mistake. The train passed through the blue door and returned through the black one.

Once.

Twice.

By the third circuit, Qiao had stopped pretending she was watching it. He had settled on the floor beside the chair. She slid down to sit with him. For a while they listened to the little mechanism spend itself.

When the spring weakened, the tune stretched between notes.

He put an arm around her. The sleeve rode up over a brown wrist, clean and warm against hers.

Qiao let her head rest against his chest.

She could hear his heartbeat beneath her ear.

It seemed like an unnecessarily good sound.

“Tomorrow,” he said again, almost asleep.

Qiao closed her eyes.

His other arm came around her.

The train entered the blue door one last time.

Neither of them stayed awake to see whether it came back.