The Last Honest Thing

The room was always loudest in the beginning—laughter erupting, voices carrying, the sound of shoes meeting the floor. Each Tally in the room belonged to someone. A human, somewhere out there, who had not yet decided their vote. Until they did, you waited.

Tally #10,250 had been here before. Twice to be exact. Many of them had, but the noise at the start still caught him each time. Veiled conversations bounced off the walls like a second heartbeat. Across the room, five doors lined the wall in a long, even row. They were plain doors. Unremarkable at first glance. But no one looked away from them for long. Above them, a large red digital clock counting down.

Two hours remaining.

The first departures happened quickly and quietly, the way they always did. A Tally near the far left door simply stopped mid-sentence, turned, and walked through. Then another. Then three at once through the second door. The room barely registered it—this was the nature of things. You stayed until you didn’t.

#10,250 watched from the middle of the room.

He had been watching the doors for some time when he heard his name—not his name, his number, though after long enough they became the same thing.

“Ten-Two-Fifty.”

He turned.

#1,200,040 was threading through the thinning crowd, making his way towards him. He’d always been taller, but against the other Tallies, tonight, he stood out. Something loosened in #10,250’s chest.

“Triple-O-Forty,” he said.

They met in the centre of the room as another cluster of Tallies filtered toward the rightmost doors. The hum was already dropping in pitch. Already the room felt wider than it had just a few moments ago.

“Still here,” Forty said.

“Still here,” Ten agreed.

The middle doors went first. They always did. A handful of Tallies made their way towards them. The independent door swung open and one passed through. Then another. No one else followed—they rarely did.

Ten watched it happen the way you watch the weather.

“You look the same.”

“I don’t,” Forty replied. “But thank you.”

Ten pressed his lips together. The laughter broke through. The type that came from somewhere deep.

Forty followed suit. He reached out and put his hand on Ten’s shoulder.

“What are the chances?” he said.

Ten looked around. “One in,” he paused. His eyes dancing around the Tallies still bunched around them. “One hundred and fifty million or so,” he said with a grin.

They both continued to laugh.

More departures now in waves. The left side thinning steadily, small clusters at a time, purposeful. The far right door opened and closed, opened and closed. The room's geometry was shifting—what had been a crowd was becoming a gathering, then something smaller than that. The floor, once obscured, was showing itself in patches.

“You remember Biology?” Forty said.

“Mrs. Cassabianca.”

“Mrs. Cassabianca,” Forty confirmed.

Beside them, two Tallies exchanged a look, shook hands and made their way towards the doors, exiting through the second one from the left.

The constant hum that once filled the room was fading into an octave closer to silence. The silence got stronger, voices continued as echoes rolling through the room in faded layers. One hundred left. Then fifty. Then twenty. The doors swinging less frequently, the intervals between departures growing longer.

Then it was just them.

The clock above the doors showing fifteen minutes.

For a moment neither of them spoke. The quiet was unfamiliar for them, but not uncomfortable.

Forty looked at the clock then at the doors.

“I wonder if we will get to walk through this time,” he said. A beat. “It feels different this go ‘round.”

Ten nodded. It did feel different. He wasn't sure they meant the same thing by that.

“I just think.” Forty stopped. Started again. “I think there's only one real choice here. When you look at everything. When y’ actually look. People like us, Ten, we grew up a certain way, y’know.” He said it the way you say something you've already decided, something that doesn't feel like opinion anymore. Fact. Settled. He looked at Ten. “Y’ know what I mean.”

It wasn't a question.

Ten looked at the doors. The right one. Then the left. Then back at his oldest friend, who was watching him with something open and trusting in his face. It had been seven years since college, and almost two decades since they met in middle school.

People like us.

Back home, people rarely changed. They married nearby. They played recreational baseball nearby. Prayed nearby. Buried their parents nearby. There was comfort in that. Until there wasn’t.

Something shifted in the air between them. Ten’s shoulders stiffened. Forty didn’t notice. He was onto the next thing.

He walked past Ten, moving closer to the wall. He leaned his back against it and slid himself to the floor and let out an exhale.

“Remember when she failed the whole class because nobody could name the bones in the hand?”

“Proximal phalanges.” Ten said. “I remember.”

“Proximal phalanges,” Forty repeated solemnly.

They laughed. And for a few minutes it was Calloway Street again—it was before any of this, before the doors, before the number that was their name. It was just two people who had once known each other completely, finding out they still could.

Ten minutes.

It was quiet. Ten watched the clock count down. The red clock made a faint buzzing sound he was only now hearing.

“I just think we've been here before,” Forty continued. “Every four years, same room, same doors, same arguments. And we keep walking out the same way.” He shook his head. “At some point ya' have to ask yourself—is it conviction or is it just habit?”

Ten was quiet for a moment. “Habit isn't the worst thing.”

“It is if nothing ever changes.”

“You don't worry about what changes with it?”

“I worry more about what stays the same.” Forty looked at him. He was being genuine. Ten knew the difference.

“It’s time,” Forty said simply. “That's all I know.”

Ten didn’t reply right away. He looked at the clock. Eight minutes. He walked over to Forty and sat down next to him. His elbows rested on his knees. He loosened his tie.

Forty continued. “Ya’ thinking the same?” he said, nodding towards the right side of the room.

He looked at Ten.

Ten swallowed. He felt something turn in his stomach.

“It’s time, I agree.”

Six minutes.

“Hey, how’s the farm. I miss sharing a cold one with you in the hayloft,” Ten said softly.

“We completed a renovation last year. Pops and I. That tornado last May took it down to the studs,” replied Forty.

Four minutes.

“How’s life in the Big Apple? Never thought I’d see ya’ working in a tall tower in any city, let alone that one,” Forty said.

Ten looked over at him. He smiled with the corners of his lips. “It’s not Boone.” A pause. “It’s not home.”

They had started in the same place. That much was still true. But the same place, Ten had come to understand, was not the same as the same direction.

They sat in silence, soaking up their time together.

The clock showed one minute.

“Together?” he said.

Ten rose. “Together.”

They stood up. They made their way to the end of the room. The sound of Ten's wood-soled dress shoes juxtaposed the noise of Forty’s rubber work boots.

As they got close to the doors, Ten stopped. They looked at each other for a moment.

Twenty seconds. The clock now letting out a beep with each digit change.

“Out there,” Ten said, waving his hand above his head. A beat. “Let’s not wait so long.”

“Beers on the new hayloft when it gets warmer,” Forty replied.

“After you,” Forty said holding open the right door.

Thoughts and memories came fast. Both were fleeting. Ten thought about habit. About conviction. About the time he and Forty both hit their first little league home-run in the same game. About all the times he had stood at a door and told himself it was the same thing.

He pulled his tie up and straightened it, wiggling the knot up to his neck. Forty. I'm sorry, he thought. He stepped to the left, and passed through the door.

The buzzer sounded. #1,200,040 was standing in front of his door as it shut in front of him. The clock read 00:00.

The room had never been so large.

It didn't judge, it never did.

It only counted.

***

Tyler pushed open the doors to a public school on the Upper West Side. He barely got his vote in on time—work had kept him late. The night sky glowed with the ubiquitous light of offices and apartments. The November air crisp, his breath creating clouds with each exhale. He walked by the bodega he’d stopped in the day after he moved to New York City—its neon sign throwing light onto the pavement. He drew the zipper up beneath his chin, covering his tie. He continued towards his place, his wood-soled shoes clacking against the sidewalk with each step. Somewhere, just out of sight, a baseball cracked off a bat.

He slowed for a moment.

***

The gravel crackled beneath the tires as Finn’s truck stopped hard outside. There were a few cars left in the parking lot of Boone County High School. He was almost running by the time he reached the gymnasium doors, his work boots landing heavy. He tried the left first. Locked. Then the right. Locked too. He cupped his hands over his eyes, leaning into the window on the doors—his breath fogging them in the chilled November Oklahoma air. There wasn’t anyone in sight.

The drive home was short. Everything was in this town. He pulled up to the farm, his headlights sweeping the freshly painted barn. He had been closing up when he realized the time. He began to drag the door shut, staring back inside. His eye caught the hayloft. He thought of summer.

He shut the door completely.